Peru: order to respect the decision of a woman from …

Peruvian justice released a decision on Thursday in which it orders compliance with a woman’s decision to apply the dignified death with medical assistance, following an incurable and progressive disease which has affected her for years.

This is the first decision on this issue in the country, where the 10th Constitutional Court of the Superior (Appeal) Court of Lima ordered the Ministry of Health and Social Insurance (Essalus) to “respect the decision “of Ana Estrada Ugarte, 44 years old, “to end his life by the technical procedure of the euthanasia”.

The sentence, which can be appealed, indicates that “euthanasia should be understood as the action of a doctor to administer directly (orally or intravenously) a drug intended to end his life”.

Estrada, a psychologist by profession, has suffered from incurable polymystiosis since the age of 12, a disease that causes progressive muscle weakness, which is why he has been using a wheelchair since he was 20 years old.

His illness worsened from 2015 and he now stays in bed most of the day and needs help using the bathroom. His fight for a dignified death was captured through a personal blog.

“My body keeps deteriorating. Every day I lose more strength. I depend more on the ventilator, I exhaust myself more to swallow and in general for all daily activities “, Estrada recently told the Perú 21 newspaper. In addition, the woman required state intervention” to choose when and under what conditions to die. “Help me achieve this,” he exclaimed.

The court’s decision will surely cause a great controversy in Peru, where the Catholic Church rejects euthanasia and where assisted death, qualified as pious homicide, is punishable by three years in prison.

The amparo presented with the sponsorship of the Office of the Mediator requests that the sanction provided for by law be suspended and that the state establish the necessary protocols for when Ana requests euthanasia.

“I am speechless, very excited. For me it is a pleasure, a huge joy that I feel. We have reached the goal, I feel it,” Estrada told RPP after hearing the decision. .

And I add: “What I’ve always been clear about is that when that moment came, which has already come, I was going to be free. It was the fight I was fighting for all the time.

In Latin America, only Colombia decriminalized euthanasia in 1997, while in Mexico there is the so-called “good dying” law, which allows the patient or his family to request that life not be prolonged by artificial means, while at the same time Uruguay Congress is discussing a bill on euthanasia itself.

Scope of the decision

The court decision orders the “non-application of article 112 of the Penal Code” which prohibits assistance in dying, after accepting the appeal presented in February 2020 by the Mediator in favor of Estrada.

“The judgment is historic because it recognizes a right and this does not happen every day,” he told AFP news agency. Percy Castillo, Deputy for Human Rights of the Defensoría. For his part, the Mediator, Walter GutierrezHe underlined that “the human being has every right to end his life, because it is the last corner of freedom”.

The Superior Court held that refusing Estrada’s assisted death affects “the rights to dignity, autonomy, the free development of his personality and the threat of not being subjected to cruel treatment and inhuman ”.

The decision can be appealed by the Ministry of Health or the Ministry of Justice to the highest court in the country but, if the appeal is against the office of the ombudsman, it must be brought before the Court. constitutional.