|
'I want to die'
29/11/2006 11:20 - (SA)
|
|
|
 |
|
| Inmaculada Echevarria, who has muscular dystrophy, has been in a hospital bed for 20 years and wants to die. (Pepe Marin, AP) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Granada - Inmaculada Echevarria has spent much of her life watching muscular dystrophy ruin her body.
She's been in a hospital bed for 20 years, her movements are now reduced to wiggling her fingers and toes, and she wants to die.
"For me, life stopped having meaning a long time ago. I want them to help me die because I have spent my whole life suffering," said 51-year-old Echevarria, whose case has triggered debate in Spain on the rights of people with incurable diseases to seek help in dying.
Euthanasia is illegal in Spain and people who help someone else die can be punished with at least six months in prison. But Spain's Socialist government wants to legalise it as part of a wave of liberal reforms that have largely transformed this traditionally Roman Catholic country.
Under Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, Spain is one of only a half-dozen countries in the world that have legalised gay marriage. He has also made it easier for Spaniards to divorce, eased laws on stem cell research, stiffened laws on violence against women and ended direct government financing of the Catholic church.
If Spain does legalise euthanasia, it would join the Netherlands and Belgium in allowing the practice, although Switzerland allows some cases of assisted suicide.
Opposition conservatives are against the idea and have joined the church in denouncing most of the government's reform campaign as eating away at Spain's traditional family and religious values.
The euthanasia initiative has yet to be debated in parliament, but some are hoping Echevarria's case may eventually change that. Her plight has drawn intense media interest, with television and radio talk shows giving the subject a lot of attention. Newspapers showed pictures of the bed-bound Ecehvarria on their front pages.
Wants respirator turned off
Echevarria, who fell sick at age 11, wants doctors to turn off the respirator that keeps her alive. It was long ago that she gave up on her dream of becoming a physician herself.
There was a similar case in May of this year: a 53-year-old tetraplegic man in the northern city of Valladolid had a friend secretly disconnect his ventilator. No charges were brought in his death because of insufficient evidence as to who helped him. Echevarria's drama is different because she wants the assistance to be public and administered by doctors.
Fernando Martin, a doctor and spokesperson for a pro-euthanasia association called Right to Die with Dignity, insists Echevarria's request is legal. What she wants, he said, is a machine to be unhooked, not an assertive act that would actually cause her death, such as a lethal injection.
"She would just have to be sedated so she would not suffer," Martin said in an interview.
Up to the courts
Spanish health minister Elena Salgado said Echevarria's case was a delicate matter that was up to the courts.
A patients rights law passed in 2002 says any sick person who is in control of their mental faculties can refuse treatment. And Echevarria fits the bill, said Rogelio Altisent, chief ethicist at a federation of Spanish medical associations.
"The patient would be exercising her right to renounce treatment, such as assisted breathing," Altisent said.
So far Echevarria's lawyers have had her sign a living will, spelling out that if she becomes mentally incapacitated she wants her life support switched off. But Martin says this is pointless because it will have no effect so long as she remains mentally competent.
What the lawyers need to do is make a request in writing for the respirator to be turned off, and if this is rejected - as expected because the hospital where she is being treated is run by a Catholic order - try to move her to another hospital.
Film about another euthanasia campaigner
In the meantime Echevarria spends her days reading and watching television. She gave a hospital room press conference in late October but since then has clammed up, refusing visits and calls.
She wants to die painlessly, and cringes at the memory of Ramon Sampredro, a Spanish paraplegic who campaigned for euthanasia, spent 30 years in bed and ultimately died by sipping water laced with cyanide in 1998.
He did this after crafting a complex scheme to have friends prepare and deliver the poison in incremental steps so no single one of them could be charged criminally. The story was made into the movie El Mar Adentro (The Sea Inside), which won an Oscar for best foreign film in 2005.
"I don't want to die with pain, like Ramon Sampredo. He felt all of what was happening to him and it was a cruel death," she said at the press conference.
She has little family - a son, now in his 20s, whom she gave up in adoption as a baby because she could not care for him after the father died in a car accident. She also has a brother in the northern city of Logrono but has not heard from him in years.
"The loneliness is worse than the physical pain," she said at the press conference. "People treat me well, with kind words, but in the end no one helps me."
- AP
|
