Understanding politics across borders and divides
Last Updated: July 2026 Overview The Americas legalized assisted dying through a route Europe mostly did not use: constitutional litigation. Colombia’s Constitutional Court decriminalized euthanasia in 1997, before any European parliament acted, and Ecuador’s court followed in 2024. Canada’s framework also began with a Supreme Court ruling, in Carter in 2015, rather than with legislation. … Read more
Last Updated: July 2026 Overview Europe contains both the world’s most permissive assisted dying regimes and countries where helping someone die carries a long prison sentence, often within a few hundred kilometres of each other. The Netherlands recorded 10,341 euthanasia and assisted suicide deaths in 2025, about 6% of all deaths in the country, while … Read more
Published: July 21, 2026 France has voted to create a legal right to assisted dying, ending one of the longest and most contentious social-policy debates of Emmanuel Macron’s presidency. On July 15, 2026, the National Assembly gave final approval to the bill by 291 votes to 241, allowing adults with incurable, advanced illnesses to … Read more
Overview A small but steadily growing number of countries now allow doctors to help patients die, under conditions that vary enormously from place to place. Roughly a dozen countries permit some form of assisted dying, and more than a dozen US states plus every Australian state allow a narrower version. Most of the world still … Read more