Spaniard's longed-for death sparks euthanasia debate

By Sinikka Tarvainen Mar 15, 2007, 14:21 GMT

Granada, Spain - For more than two decades, Inmaculada Echevarria had wanted to die.

The 51-year-old Spanish woman had suffered for 40 years from a muscular dystrophy which gradually deprived her of all autonomy.

The disease forced her to give her son up for adoption after birth, and left her bedridden for 20 years. Finally, she was only able to move her facial muscles and fingertips.

When doctors disconnected Echevarria's breathing machine in the southern city of Granada on Wednesday evening, she undoubtedly passed away with a sense of relief.

'At least I know that this will end, that I am going to be free,' she had said after being told that the Andalusian regional government had authorized her to refuse the treatment keeping her alive.

'My life is full of empty spaces, of silence,' she explained earlier. 'Loneliness is worse than the physical pain.'

Echevarria's death relaunched a debate about euthanasia in Spain, where the practice is illegal, but where several notorious cases of assisted death have occurred in recent years.

Andalusian authorities took their decision after consulting an ethics commission and a judicial organ, arguing that Echevarria's case did not constitute euthanasia, only a refusal of medical treatment.

Not allowing Echevarria to refuse an 'unusual artificial means' keeping her alive would have violated her autonomy as a patient, bioethics professor Maria Dolores Vila-Coro said.

The case 'opens the door to other sick people who want to demand their rights within the limits of the law,' said the Association for the Right to Die with Dignity.

Other experts, however, described Echevarria's death as a clear case of euthanasia.

The plans to allow her to die had been met with protests by the Catholic Church, with Cardinal Antonio Canizares criticizing them as an 'attack against dignity and human life.'

The church's attitude prevented Echevarria from dying at the Catholic hospital, which had taken care of her for a decade and where she had wished to pass away.

Some hours before her death, Echevarria was moved to a public hospital, a decision which Andalusian regional Prime Minister Manuel Chaves attributed to the Vatican.

Echevarria's case followed those of Madeleine Z, 69, an Alicante woman who committed suicide in January before a degenerative disease left her without autonomy, and of Jorge Leon, 53, a paralyzed man who launched an internet appeal to find someone to help him die.

An unknown person disconnected Leon's breathing machine in Valladolid last year.

The most famous case, however, has been that of Ramon Sampedro, a paralyzed ship mechanic who fought for three decades for his right to die.

Sampedro's friend Ramona Maneiro finally gave him a cyanide-laced drink in 1998. She confessed to having done so only after the statute of limitations in the case had expired, making it impossible for the judiciary to pursue her.

The Sampedro case provided the inspiration for the film The Sea Inside by Alejandro Amenabar, which won an Oscar for best foreign- language film in 2005.

The successive cases of assisted death have maintained a lively debate about euthanasia in Spain.

Pro-euthanasia activists and far-left parties have pressed Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's Socialists to honour their election pledge of establishing a parliamentary commission to discuss the possibility of legalizing assisted death.

The Zapatero government has pioneered social innovations such as homosexual marriage, but it is reluctant to become a champion of euthanasia in the Western world.

Euthanasia does not yet have a sufficient social backing in Spain, the Socialists argue.