The Prosecutor's Office argues that a father can try to stop the euthanasia of his daughter in court
It also recognizes the ability to decide freely of the first patient who has her dignified death in the hands of a judge.
BarcelonaThe Public Prosecutor's Office considers that a father has the right to try to stop, through judicial means, the euthanasia process of his daughter, who is an adult and who meets the legal requirements to receive assisted death. This is the position that the public prosecutor has sent to the Barcelona court that must resolve the case. First trial in the entire State for trying to stop euthanasia The decision has already been endorsed by the commission of experts in charge of evaluating patients who request it. The prosecutor also acknowledges that the young woman meets the requirements to be subject to euthanasia and is able to decide freely.
A week ago, this unprecedented trial had a dozen witnesses parade through the 12th contentious court in Barcelona. The patient, Noelia, a 24-year-old girl who has paraplegia as a result of a spinal cord injury caused by a suicide attempt in 2022, also testified. The girl has been waiting eight months for euthanasia, which has been suspended since August 1 by court order. Her father, advised by the Christian Lawyers group, took euthanasia to court three days before it was administered to her. His arguments are based on the fact that the daughter's psychiatric history invalidates her will, although all the specialists who appeared in court agreed on her decision-making capacity.
Once the trial was held, the parties had five working days to send the court their conclusions in which they point out how they think the sentence should be resolved. Until now, the Prosecutor's Office had only ruled on the provisional nature, and in August, when Noelia's father opened the judicial process, it was in favour of provisionally suspending euthanasia and waiting for the trial to avoid irreparable damage.
The Generalitat intercedes
However, the Catalan Attorney's Office has asked the court to reject the father's request and allow Noelia's euthanasia to go ahead. The administration defends the unanimous opinion of the Guarantee and Evaluation Commission of Catalonia, which gave the green light to the patient's request. This is a body made up of doctors, lawyers, nurses, social workers and psychologists who are responsible for validating or rejecting requests for euthanasia.
Unlike the Public Prosecutor's Office, the Catalan Government maintains that the girl's father is not entitled to interfere in his daughter's decision. In this sense, it points out that the young woman has intact capacities to make the decision, and recalls that she was under the guardianship of the General Directorate of Attention to Children and Adolescents (DGAIA) until she was an adult. Even now, when she lives in a residential hospital, she does not have any "material dependency relationship" with her father.
According to the Generalitat, the man has started the legal proceedings due to "an ideological divergence" with his daughter. In fact, in the trial both the girl and a doctor who treated her explained that colleagues at the juvenile centre where she had been under guardianship from the age of 13 placed religious pictures, crosses and symbols in her room, and that they insisted that, at a time when she was heavily medicated, she sign the document that her father has used to claim that he has affirmed her. The young woman explained to the judge that she signed it "so that they would leave her alone".