(New York Times) – Tatiana Andia knew Colombia would permit her a medically assisted death. She took her country with her on the journey to dying.

Colombia has allowed physician-assisted death — known there as euthanasia — for a decade. It was the first country in Latin America to allow it, one of just a handful in the world at the time, spurred by a liberal high court petitioned by a terminally ill patient seeking a hastened death.

But as Ms. Andia was discovering, the existence on paper of a right to control one’s death was only a first step. Despite extremely liberal policies, assisted death remains rare in Colombia, blocked by institutional barriers in the country’s conservative medical culture, and the discomfort with talking about death that so frustrated her. It’s a conundrum playing out in a wave of other countries, from Argentina to France, that are introducing or expanding access to assisted death: sometimes the law gets ahead of what a society can accept. (Read More)