It is not easy to talk about euthanasia without the discussion becoming an ideological battlefield. For the first time since the approval of the euthanasia law in Spain, a front has been opened in the courts and justice has become the last trench where the will of a 24-year-old girl is disputed. who has been demanding euthanasia for months. A decision validated by the Guarantee and Evaluation Commission of Catalonia, which has confirmed that it complies with all legal requirements.
Noelia's request, who is suffering from irreversible paraplegia after a suicide attempt, remains at a standstill. In August, with only three days left before euthanasia was to be performed on her, her father, advised by the ultra-Catholic group Abogados Cristianos, took the case to court and managed to stop the process. The fundamental question of the debate is whether parents can resort to the courts to prevent euthanasia being applied to their adult daughter, when it has already been granted by the experts to whom the law itself grants the authority to authorise it and guarantee its legality.
At the hearing, where the judge was able to hear witnesses before deciding whether to admit the appeal, the lawyer representing the parents argued, without providing any expert report, that the proceedings should be revoked because the girl suffers from a mental disorder with suicidal and paranoid ideas that prevent her from making decisions about her life. On the other hand, the Generalitat, representing the Guarantees Commission, and all the professionals who have intervened in the proceedings, argued that the girl complies with the legal requirements, and that she does not suffer from any cognitive alteration that would disable her from making decisions freely, consciously and in an informed manner.
The application of euthanasia to people with mental health disorders is, and cannot be denied, a medically complex issue. For this reason, it is an easy gateway for ideological crusades. Behind this specific case, Christian Lawyers, an association fueled by an ultra-processed Catholicism that combines ingredients such as the defense of Francoism, pro-life ideas and the offensive against new family models, does not protect Noelia, it protects its ideology. This battle is not legal, it is moral, about imposing its truth on the whole society. The original sense of Christian values that it wants to promote is so adulterated that it is diluted in the service of a political agenda.
This belligerent association against aid in dying questions the girl's ability to make free decisions, forgetting that the rigidity of ideas and blind submission to beliefs that do not pass through the sieve of critical thinking also limit freedom. One may agree or not with the decriminalization of euthanasia, everyone can position themselves on one side or the other, but no one is entitled to impose their own beliefs on others. Noelia asks to die because she suffers, she has been suffering for a long time, and she trusts that it will be the law that will save her from her cross.
