Constitutional Court demands that the Government of Colombia expand euthanasia to minors with intellectual disabilities

The House of Representatives of Colombia on Wednesday rejected a bill aimed at regulating euthanasia. Despite this legislative opposition, the practice continues to be carried out under the protection of the Constitutional Court, which has recently issued failures to expand its scope, including minors with intellectual disabilities.

Although euthanasia was decriminalized in 1997 by the Court, attempts to legalize it formally have failed, accumulating 17 projects rejected by Congress in recent years.

The Constitutional Court has expanded access to euthanasia through failures such as Judgment T-057 of February 14, 2025. In this decision, the Ministry of Health is ordered to modify the Resolution 825 of 2018that regulates euthanasia in minors, so that “do not exclude” those “with intellectual disabilities of the possibility of submitting requests for the activation of the eutagy procedure.”

The resolution prohibits euthanasia from children under 12 and adolescents who “present altered states of consciousness”, have intellectual disabilities and suffer from psychiatric disorders “that alter the competition to understand, reason and issue a reflective judgment.”

In her ruling, the Court denied a mother the euthanasia she requested for her teenage son with intellectual disabilities, but gave the Ministry of Health six months to expand the practice to this population group and again urged the Parliament to legalize it.

The congressman of the Conservative Party, Luis Miguel López Aristizábal, criticized the Court for using this case to “insist on an agenda that has been repeatedly rejected by Congress.”

In dialogue with ACI Press, he warned that the practical court a “dangerous judicial activism” because “individual decisions are manipulated to introduce substantive changes that should be democratically discussed.”

The parliamentarian said that euthanasia is not legal in Colombia and expanding it “to minors with disabilities is not only ethically questionable, but reflects an exclusive and disastrous vision that puts the most vulnerable of our society at risk.”

He also indicated that “one cannot talk about euthanasia as a ‘right’ in a strict sense. What there is is a constitutional interpretation that has been expanding its limits without due democratic support.”

For his part, the president of the United Platform for Life, Jesús Magaña said that the Court continues to “destroy” the Article 11 of the Constitutionwhich declares the right to life “inviolable” and prohibits the death penalty.

“Euthanasia is a violation of life and an almost death penalty for efficiency or savings of health treatments that doctors should apply to terminal patients or people of legal age,” said ACI Press.

Magaña added that sentence T-057 of 2025 contains “a utilitarian vision”, because “what they want is to eliminate minors with some disease that generates a strong expense to the health system.” “They do it for strictly economic reasons,” he said.

What are the characteristics of people with intellectual disabilities?

The Resolution 1239 of 2022 of the Ministry of Health indicates that people with intellectual disabilities “present deficiencies in general mental capacities, such as reasoning, problem solving, planning, abstract thinking, judgment, academic learning and learning experience.”

According to the resolution, these people do not reach “the standards of personal independence and social responsibility in one or more aspects of everyday life, including communication, social participation, academic or occupational functioning and personal independence.”

In that sense, the clinical neuropsychologist, Alis Bedoya Olaya, said that although for the Court and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities these people could give their consent and fully exercise their legal capacity, the clinical perspective indicates something else.

The expert explained that from the clinical perspective “it can be identified that the informed consent requires complex cognitive abilities such as executive functions, abstract reasoning, the anticipation of consequences and moral judgment, which are being developed with the course of age and that in minors and in people with intellectual disabilities (DI), they can be presented in a preliminary way”, depending on the level of disability, if it is mild or light deep.

Therefore, “the ability to decide must be evaluated in a particular way, but in general, minors with DI have limitations in understanding, symbolic language and autonomy; therefore we see that in addition to their intellectual coefficient, it is necessary to consider their abilities to adapt autonomously to the environment,” said Aci Press.

In his guardianship, the teenager’s mother told the Court that he could interpret his son’s desire to receive euthanasia.

The Colombian neuropsychologist clarified that “although parents or caregivers can have extensive knowledge of their children, the interpretation of the suffering or desire to die is subjective and there is a greater level of importance when it comes to a decision such as euthanasia.”

“Neurota and bioethics literature warns that tutors should not replace the will in irreversible decisions, especially when there is no clear evidence that the minor has the ability to form an autonomous will. The subjectivity of parental love does not replace the will and autonomy of the children,” said Aci Press.

Regarding the court ruling, the expert said that “importance to scientific evidence on neurocognitive limitations in these minors” and not based on social criteria other than clinicals should be given importance.

“When the state validates the elimination of lives for functional, structural and psychological reasons, there is a risk of not emphasizing the human possibilities of recovery, stability, homeostasis, strengthening of the social fabric, among others (…) and in the case of the DI not to understand it as a human condition that requires understanding, and discovery of the potentialities of each case, ”he said.

The Constitutional Court has no power to create laws or rights

Legislator López Aristizábal said that “it is unacceptable that the Constitutional Court intends to legislate”, when “it has no power to create laws or rights.”

“Congress has been clear: neither euthanasia nor abortion have been recognized as fundamental rights, nor in the Constitution, much less in the law. Democratic feeling has been felt at more than one opportunity to reject abortion and euthanasia, but the Court persists in imposing its ideological agenda,” he said.

The Constitutional Court also decriminalized abortion in 2006 and has extended it in subsequent rulings.

“What we are seeing is a usurpation of functions that erodes institutional legitimacy and calls into question the will of a large number of Colombians,” said the congressman.

“Human life in all its forms is a constitutional right, also recognized in international system. Death, on the other hand, is not,” he said