Court rejects father's request to stop daughter's euthanasia
The lawsuit filed by the man, advised by an ultra-Catholic group, has led to an unprecedented trial in the State.
BarcelonaThe court has rejected the request of the man who wanted to stop his daughter's euthanasia. The legal process the father initiated in August, three days before the girl's scheduled euthanasia date, has extended the wait by eight months. The ruling, in the first case in Spain involving attempts to stop euthanasia, finds that the man, advised by Christian Lawyers, lacked the legal standing to intervene in the request of the girl, an adult with full mental capacity to decide and understand her request.
The ruling, signed by Irene Urbón, the judge in charge of Barcelona's 12th Contentious Court, orders the man to pay the costs of the legal proceedings. The ruling can be appealed within the next 15 business days, and, in fact, Christian Lawyers have already warned that they are prepared to take the case to the European Court of Justice if the judge does not rule in their favor.
Noelia, 24, paralyzed following a suicide attempt, already had the unanimous approval of the 19 members of the Catalan Guarantee and Assessment Commission (CGAC) to receive euthanasia. At the trial, she reiterated her wishes, and all the specialists who treated her agreed that she has the mental capacity to make a free decision and that she meets the requirements established by law: constant physical and psychological suffering, described as intolerable, with no prognosis for improvement.
During the trial, the Generalitat (Catalan Government) defended the decision of the committee of experts that studied Noelia's case. The Prosecutor's Office, for its part, has acknowledged that the girl meets the requirements to qualify for euthanasia. and has the capacity to make her own decisions freely, but also believes that the father had the right to try to stop her decision through legal means.
When can the family intervene?
In fact, the underlying legal debate this case has brought to the table is whether a person is entitled to halt the euthanasia of a family member in court. In the ruling, the judge reviews the jurisprudence that defines the cases in which someone can intervene in defense of another person's fundamental rights, given that the father has justified his legal action as a defense of the girl's right to life. The judge concludes that, in the cases in which a third party has been entitled to intervene on behalf of a family member's rights, the affected party was a minor or incapacitated person. Noelia's case is not the case with either.
Although the father has questioned Noelia's decision-making capacity due to her psychiatric history, all the doctors who have treated her agree that she has the full faculties to understand her request. The father has also not initiated any proceedings to declare the young woman incapacitated and has not provided "any evidence of the alleged incapacity." Furthermore, the ruling states, the young woman has not lived with her father or mother for years because their custody was removed when she was a minor. Noelia lived in a shelter run by the General Directorate for the Care of Children and Adolescents (DGAIA) from the age of 13 until she became an adult, and is now living in a residential hospital.
Reports coercion from the environment
During the court proceedings, Noelia's father and lawyers from Abogados Cristianos maintained that Noelia changed her mind about euthanasia several times, but they failed to produce any corroborating witnesses. The only evidence they attempted to prove this has been rendered worthless. It was a letter signed by Noelia in which she asked to postpone euthanasia for six months to consider her decision. She herself explained to the judge that two girls she knows, "who are in a religious community and often sneaked into her room unannounced," wrote it to her at a time when she was very sleepy and on medication.
"She didn't know what she was writing or what they were saying, and she just wanted them to leave so she could go back to sleep," the ruling states, based on Noelia's testimony at the trial. The young woman also explained in court that she had been coerced by those around her to back down, and that some of her classmates at the juvenile center where she had been held since she was 13 would place holy cards, crosses, and religious symbols in her room.
A step toward consolidating the right to euthanasia
For the Association for the Right to Die with Dignity, the ruling made public this Monday represents "a step forward in the consolidation of the right to euthanasia." The organization's president, Cristina Vallès, added that this resolution "reaffirms the importance of respecting the will and autonomy of people in the final process of their lives, without undue interference."
"We wonder if the law that certain political forces were unable to stop in Congress now wants to be annulled through the courts," says the association, which points out that there have already been two unsuccessful appeals against the same law before the Constitutional Court. Vallès warned that "the judicialization of CGAC resolutions for ideological reasons could even be considered an abuse of rights, as it could amount to fraudulently obstructing the application of a law."