Spanish Parliament Passes Law Authorizing Euthanasia
The Spanish parliament building (Wikimedia Commons)
The lower house of the Spanish Parliament, ruled by the left-wing Socialist Party coalition, passed a law on March 18 authorizing the act of euthanasia, making Spain the fourth country in Europe to do so. The law will officially take effect in June 2021.
The lower house of Parliament had engaged in contentious debates since December 2020, when legislators first introduced the bill, with the center and left parties in favor and the conservative and religious parties against it.
The law dictates that adults with “serious and incurable” diseases that cause “unbearable suffering” can opt to end their lives. The new Spanish law permits two different methods to end one’s life: euthanasia and assisted suicide. In medical terms, euthanasia is the act of “intentionally ending a life to relieve suffering” while assisted suicide is when another person intentionally helps the patient end their own life. While assisted suicide is legal in various countries, Spain is the fourth country in Europe and the sixth country globally to legalize euthanasia, following Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Canada, and Colombia.
In order to authorize the treatment, the patient must meet three conditions. First, the patient must suffer from a “serious or incurable illness" or a "chronic or incapacitating" condition that causes "intolerable suffering.” Second, the patient must be an adult Spanish national or a legal resident. Third, the patient must fully be aware and conscious when they make the requests to end their life, submitted “twice in writing, 15 days apart” in order to thoroughly ensure conscious consent.
In Spain’s lower Parliament, the governing Socialist Party drew its support from smaller left-wing and centrist parties in order to achieve the 202 votes in favor of the bill, while many right-wing and religious groups, who comprised the 141 votes against, strongly opposed the new law. Once Congress adopted the law, far-right MP Lourdes Mendez told Parliament that they had “elected death instead of medicine,” while the Episcopal Conference, a grouping of Spain’s leading bishops, commented that euthanasia is still “a form of murder since it involves one man causing the death of another.”
However, these sentiments differ from the larger Spanish population. 85 percent of Spaniards favor “regularizing” euthanasia, and a recent petition calling for its decriminalization reached one million signatures. Sofia Malagon, a 60-year-old citizen with Parkinson’s disease, worries about her potential dementia in the future, stating that she wouldn’t want to live “like a vegetable.”
Many high-profile Spanish cases throughout the decades aided Spain in its decision to legalize euthanasia. The award for Best Foreign-Language film at the 2004 Oscars went to The Sea Inside, a film about the 30-year-long court battle that a Spanish man named Sampedro fought in order to die with dignity.
Many believe this new law to be a step in a more humane direction. In a statement given by Health Minister Carolina Darias in the aftermath of the vote, she remarked, “Today is an important day: we are heading towards the recognition of human rights. We are heading towards a more humane and fair society.”