MADRID — Ángel Hernández adjusted the purple blanket covering his wife, María José Carrasco, before asking her whether she was ready to die.
“The sooner, the better,” she replied.
On Wednesday, Mr. Hernández released a video of his last conversations with his wife, who had multiple sclerosis, shortly before helping her swallow a deadly substance. He then handed himself in to the police in Madrid and spent the night in custody, appearing the next day before a judge, who released him pending a trial for homicide.
While Mr. Hernández may now face a prison sentence for assisting in his wife’s death, his heart-wrenching recording of their last moments together has put euthanasia and assisted death at the heart of the political debate in Spain, where a national election is scheduled on April 28.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who leads a minority government, promised on Thursday that he would legalize euthanasia if his Socialist party secured a parliamentary majority. He accused the main opposition parties, the Popular Party and Ciudadanos, of repeatedly blocking any attempt to overhaul Spanish legislation to allow people suffering from terminal illnesses to have what he described as a dignified death.
“Having seen these images, I feel absolutely overwhelmed, moved, but I must say that I’m also in part outraged, because this should have been avoided,” Mr. Sánchez told Telecinco, a Spanish news channel.
Euthanasia and assisted dying have been hotly debated worldwide, including in other largely Catholic countries like Italy. In 2017, Pope Francis said that while euthanasia or assisted suicide should not be permitted, stopping treatment for terminally ill people could in some cases be “morally licit.” The pope urged “avoiding overzealous treatment.”
At the same time, some people have traveled long distances to check into medical centers in countries that have legalized euthanasia. One example was David Goodall, an Australian scientist who died in Switzerland last year at the age of 104.
Ms. Carrasco, who was in her early sixties, had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis three decades ago. It eventually left her unable to move and struggling to swallow water. She gave interviews to the news media last year in which she discussed wishing to die, but said that she was concerned about the legal consequences for her husband if he took part in her death.
Ms. Carrasco had already tried to kill herself two decades ago, while her husband was away working, but he found her when he returned home and called the emergency services. After that incident, he promised her that he would no longer try to stop her from dying.
The issue of euthanasia previously gained prominence in Spain with the death in 1998 of Ramón Sampedro, a sailor who was paralyzed in a diving accident and fought a long legal battle over his desire for an assisted suicide. His story was eventually turned into an Oscar-winning movie, “The Sea Inside.”
A woman who helped Mr. Sampedro to kill himself later discussed what she had done in a television interview, but only after the statute of limitations on her potential crime had lapsed.
Mr. Hernández is the first person in Spain to assist in a suicide and then to be detained after immediately handing himself in to the authorities, according to an advocacy group called “The Right to Die with Dignity.”
His actions “can only be understood as an act of love that should not receive any kind of criminal sanction,” the group argued in a statement.
In his video, Mr. Hernández said he and his wife had waited to see whether Spanish legislation would be changed under Mr. Sánchez, who came into office last June. But he said they gave up waiting when it became clear the issue of euthanasia was caught in a parliamentary deadlock.
On Friday, José Manuel Villegas, the secretary general of the Ciudadanos party, called the death of Ms. Carrasco “a dramatic case” that showed the issue needed regulating. Mr. Villegas said it was sad that “party interests” had left it in limbo but that his party wanted Parliament to first approve a new law on palliative care before it considered euthanasia.
The debate over euthanasia comes after recent political feuding over abortion. Last week, a candidate from the Popular Party, Adolfo Suárez Illana, was forced to apologize after launching a fierce attack on abortion, comparing the practice to the treatment of children by the Neanderthal and falsely claiming that legislation in New York now allowed abortions to take place after birth.
Source : Nytimes
