It will be 50 years since the film 'Johnny Got His Gun' was released, a dramatic defense of euthanasia that continues to move viewers despite the passage of time. A young fighter from World War I wakes up totally confused in a hospital after an explosion during a bombing. He is lucid and at first he is not aware of what has happened to him and in what conditions he is, but little by little he begins to realize. He is blind, deaf and mute and with his legs and arms amputated. He soon realizes that his body has become his prison: he is confined for life.
In 2004, director Alejandro Amenábar moved us with 'The Sea Inside', a film based on a real case, that of Ramón Sampedro, who lived for almost 30 years bedridden in the care of his family after suffering an accident at sea that left him quadriplegic. His only wish since then was to die with dignity. He went to court and asked to be allowed to reject the probes with which he was fed, or that doctors could prescribe drugs without incurring a crime of aiding suicide. He went to the Constitutional Court, but the refusal of justice condemned him to live, so he resorted to a clandestine death.
Last year, many of us got a lump in our throats when we learned of the outcome of the case of María José Carrasco, who suffered from multiple sclerosis. Her husband, Ángel Hernández, helped her to die —as was her repeated and explicit wish—, recorded the process on video and is accused of a crime of cooperation with suicide. It is sad and paradoxical that, despite the fact that a 2019 Metroscopia survey gave euthanasia the support of 87% of the population, Ángel Hernández's act of love towards his wife is in the hands of a Court of Violence against Women.
Euthanasia consists of voluntary intervention to cause death without pain, putting an end to a life of much suffering, and in our country it will finally come out of hiding at the initiative of the PSOE. The Congress of Deputies agreed that euthanasia should no longer be criminally prosecuted and become a right thanks to a broad political agreement with 198 votes in favor. So we will become the fourth state in Europe and the sixth in the world that allows ending life with the intervention of a health professional in case of incurable, serious, chronic and disabling disease.
Medically assisted suicide is a very guarantor law, since the patient must be of legal age and must confirm their will up to four times. But, on the other hand, health professionals directly involved in providing assistance to die may exercise their right to conscientious objection. In the first weeks of next year it will already be legal in Spain for an incurable patient to request help to end their life, although with the vote against of PP and Vox, the right and the extreme right once again united and anchored in the past.
Ariagona González, national deputy of the PSOE and Minister of Industry and Energy of the Cabildo de Lanzarote.
