How to Cite
Abstract
“The basis of a democracy is that citizens have freedom of choice. Death should be democratic ”; These words were recently spoken by the French Alain Cocq, a terminal patient of a terrible illness that has him confined to bed and who has decided, due to the impediment of French legislation, to interrupt his vital treatment and broadcast his death live to generate reflection on the importance of recognizing direct euthanasia as a kind of dignified death. Costa Rica is not excluded from this, and has established through several jurisprudential votes that a dignified death is a right that every terminally ill person has, which is expressed in the fact of dying without pain, thereby recognizing the relevance of orthothanasia. but not of euthanasia, which he refutes with the argument that the modern character of Human Rights grants life a supreme character. This article intends for the reader to delve into this debate, by approaching various thematic axes: the rejection of therapeutic cruelty, the various meanings of the concept of dignified death, classification of euthanasia and its legal nature. Likewise, its development is condensed in the questioning of the supremacy of human life from its friction with the principle of dignity and its edges, and the coherence of the legal system. Although it does not seek to clarify all the doubts about euthanasia, if the reader ends up with more questions than answers, the objective will have been achieved, since it is left to free meditation to answer the title: Is death a democratic decision?