[ad_1]
Martha Sepúlveda Campo, a 51-year-old Colombian woman, smiles into the television camera while joking with her son and drinking a beer to celebrate what would have been her death by euthanasia.
Sepúlveda would have been the first patient without an immediate terminal prognosis – those expected to live six months or less – to receive euthanasia in Colombia, a country considered a pioneer of the right to a dignified death, both in Latin America and in the world.
But on Saturday, a committee at the center where she had planned to undergo euthanasia on Sunday, the Instituto Colombiano del Dolor, overturned the decision, saying she did not qualify to be terminally ill.
It was not clear whether her family would take steps to force the proceedings forward.
Sepúlveda has been suffering from a degenerative disease since 2019. Over time, the symptoms have worsened to the point that she can no longer walk without assistance. Its diagnosis is amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, a disease of the nervous system that affects the mobility of the body and is considered fatal, although death can occur after months or years.
“As I have it, the best thing that can happen to me is to rest,” Sepúlveda said in an interview with the Colombian television channel Noticias Caracol.
Colombia was the first Latin American country to decriminalize euthanasia, in 1997, and it is one of the few in the world where the procedure is legal. But until this year it was only allowed in case of terminal illness.
On July 22, the Colombian Constitutional Court expanded the law, authorizing the procedure “provided that the patient suffers from severe physical or mental suffering resulting from bodily harm or from a serious and incurable illness”, according to the EFE agency.
Four days later, Sepúlveda applied for a permit, which was granted to him on August 6.
“I have been calmer since the procedure was authorized,” she said ahead of Saturday’s overthrow. “I laugh more, I sleep more calmly.”
Her eleven siblings had supported her decision and her son had been by her side during what she believed to be his last days. “I need my mother, I want her with me, in almost all conditions, but I know that in her words, she no longer lives, she survives,” Federico Redondo Sepúlveda told Noticias Caracol.
However, not everyone in the family had supported the plan, mainly for religious reasons. “With my mother it was more difficult,” said Sepúlveda, “but I think deep down she understands it too.”
His decision faces strong criticism, in a country with a large majority of Roman Catholic believers and where the church still qualifies euthanasia as a “serious offense”.
This is precisely what the Episcopal Conference of Colombia said in a statement released after the Court’s decision in July. Monsignor Francisco Antonio Ceballos Escobar declared that it was a “homicide gravely contrary to the dignity of the human person and to the divine respect for its creator”, and called for taking care of the sick instead of facilitating the procedure. , local news outlets reported.
Sepúlveda was aware of this and discussed it with his pastors. “I know the owner of life is God, yes. Nothing moves without his will, ”she said.
But she also said she believed God was “allowing this.”
Camila Jaramillo Salazar, the family’s lawyer, said Sepúlveda’s decision garnered a lot of support from Colombians, despite criticism from the Catholic Church.
In reality, over 72% of people polled by Invamer’s latest Colombia Opina poll said they were okay with euthanasia, with a higher percentage in the country’s largest cities.
“Perhaps Colombia can be a leading country in terms of advances in death-dignity,” the lawyer told Noticias Caracol.
Euthanasia was decriminalized in 1997 in the case of a terminal illness, when the patient was in great pain, requested it voluntarily and was performed by a doctor. But the government did not issue a regulation that would allow it until April 20, 2015.
Since then, only 157 procedures have been performed in the country, according to data from the Ministry of Health. For five requests for euthanasia, two are authorized, declares DescLAB, Laboratory for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
The first euthanized patient in the country was Ovidio González Correa, a 79-year-old man with a face deformed by a tumor which has become a symbol of the struggle for the right.
Asked about those who think she should fight for a living instead of asking for assisted death, Sepúlveda said she has been through a battle before.
“I’ll be a coward, but I don’t want to suffer anymore,” she said. “Struggle? I fight to rest.”
An earlier version of this story was originally published in Noticias Telemundo.
To follow NBC Latino to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
[ad_2]
Source link