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November 29, 2006

The Right To Die In Spain

A 51 year old woman with Muscular Dystrophy is becoming the poster child for a movement to legalize euthanasia in that country.

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 legalize it as part of a wave of liberal reforms that have largely transformed this traditionally Roman Catholic country.

I see this debate the way I do most debates between the religious and the non-religious. It's a matter of control.

The church lays down the rules to control our lives, and fights tooth and nail against any changes.

I have HIV and, while its not what it was at one time, I do remember a time when people I knew spoke openly about when they wanted to go, and how they wanted to die. To me, it is completely understandable that people would be allowed to make decisions about when their lives end.

I would much rather see this happen in a controlled atmosphere of a hospital than the way my uncle did it on New Years Eve 1990 - with pills and a bottle of whiskey, left to his housekeeper to find him.

Posted by Alan at November 29, 2006 05:30 AM