“Today, a majority of parliament has testified of sick people who have been advocating for this right for years,” MP Maria Luisa Carcedo said during the final debate.
She quoted the case of Ramon Sampedro, a paralyzed Spaniard who recorded his assistance in 1998, a story later told in the 2004 Oscar-winning film, The Sea Inside.
According to Spanish law on euthanasia, people who ‘have serious, chronic illnesses with no chance of recovery and with unbearable suffering’ can ask for help from a doctor to end their lives, according to the bill posted on parliament’s website.
Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands already allow euthanasia under certain conditions, reports Reuters. The Portuguese president this week declared a law on euthanasia unconstitutional.
The ruling Socialist Party promoted the law and gained support from smaller leftists and other parties. The two main conservative parties opposed it.
Thursday’s vote was the last step to become law.
‘A right, not an obligation’
MP Lourdes Mendez, of the far-right Vox party, told parliament: “You preferred death to medicine” and appealed to the Spanish constitutional court.
MP Jose Ignacio Echaniz, of the main opposition Conservative Popular Party, told parliament that the new law would provoke mistrust between parents and children. Today, the weakest in society have reason to fear. ‘
But Spanish journalist Asun Gomez Bueno disagrees. She lost her husband, Luis de Marcos, in 2017 to multiple sclerosis, at the age of 50. He wanted assisted suicide or euthanasia and she has been a leading advocate for the new law ever since.
“The last four years of his life were (Luis) completely paralyzed, but kept his cognitive ability intact,” Gomez Bueno told CNN. “There was no treatment to alleviate his pain. The pain was so terrible that he did not want to sleep at night because he knew the next day would be worse.”
“I do not want anyone else to go through the same hell he suffered,” Gomez Bueno said. “Euthanasia is a right that can only be claimed by the person concerned. It is a right, not an obligation.”