Drafted by Mariana Vargas and Cecilia Toro, the “Draft Law on Patients` Rights and Death with Dignity in Bolivia” is based on the Law on Death with Dignity promulgated in Argentina and raises a number of legal and human rights issues for which it is important to consider its implementation. This is why the Church`s position on “euthanasia” is at the center, between two extremes that do not seem to us to be in harmony with the truly human meaning of death. Of course, the bill states that no social, ideological, economic or other condition can deprive the patient of his or her rights to dignified care. Not even age. In this regard, children and adolescents are involved, “they have the right to intervene for the purpose of decision-making on medical or biological therapies or procedures affecting their life or health, with the help and representation of their parents, blood relatives in the second degree, legal representatives in this order of precedence”. These causes of death can all coincide with a positive intervention, for example, an overdose of sleeping pills or other classes of medications, or an injection of potassium chloride that leads to immediate death. Sometimes the term divine death is used for this type of intervention. However, it is generally referred to as positive, active or direct euthanasia. On the other hand, negative, passive or indirect euthanasia is the omission of effective treatment, that is, the fact that the dying process is not prolonged by machines or devices that support the patient`s life, such as the artificial respirator. Definitions are useful, but should not be too important because they do not solve the moral problems to which they relate. An example of a dignified death is that of Brittany Mernayd, the young American woman who voluntarily and legally took her own life on November 3, 2014, after being diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor. His case sparked a series of debates in various areas of the press and social media.
Brittany had no hope, the brain tumor robbed her of everything and the pain was so intense that she made the decision to die. One extreme is what can be called active euthanasia, which is the direct elimination of life. We find this unacceptable because human life is always irrelevant. No one can dispose of the life that is sacred. It is sacred because it is a gift whose ultimate meaning lies in free surrender as we have received it. The one who becomes the “master” of his life by removing it spoils his true secret. It is sacred because all human life, even the most “seemingly unworthy,” is the inviolable inheritance of humanity to which it is due. Taking them away is an attack on humanity that devalues and endangers its most fundamental and precious wealth. Can involuntary, positive or active euthanasia be justified? An example of positive involuntary euthanasia was the order of the infamous A. Hitler, who introduced eugenic euthanasia in October 1939.
(By deception, such an order was dated September 1, 1939, as if it had been linked to the beginning of the campaign against Poland.) More than 80,000 mentally ill people from Germany and Australia, epileptic, imbecile and malformed, were executed in gas chambers between 1940 and 1941. At first, the law referred exclusively to young children, but later the age was raised. On the subject, opposition deputy Wilson Santamaría (UD) said that the initiative had recently gained in importance, although this number is already included in the Bolivian penal system. “It`s legalized; If a person is in an incurable state of health, a third party can facilitate the transition to a better life,” the legislator said. Javier Zavaleta, a ruling party MP, who has opened up to the debate on criminal punishment, shares the same perception. Meanwhile, the Ombudsman, David Tezanos Pinto, has asked to apply the figure in very serious cases. At present, it is generally defined as the voluntary act of facilitating painless death “for reasons of piety”: either to avoid a painful future to a “worthless” human life. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in its 1980 Declaration, proposed a different general definition: “Acts or omissions which, by their very nature or intentionally, cause death in order to eliminate all pain” (No. 2). The Pontifical Council Cor Unum (1981) considers euthanasia as all acts “which consist in ending the life of a person or a sick person”. There is also the case of Karen Ann Quinlan, a 21-year-old American woman who fell into a coma due to an alcohol and drug overdose. Her adoptive parents, after a long legal battle, asked doctors to stop the exceptional treatments so that the young woman could die naturally.
However, after separation, the patient remained alive for ten years. Another famous case, very similar to the previous one, is that of Nancy Beth Cruzan, a 25-year-old woman who remained in a persistent vegetative state for 8 years until the Supreme Court approved the interruption of food management and died in 1990. The latter decision is clearly reprehensible; Because providing a person with nutrients means meeting their basic needs, and depriving a person of their hunger (6).
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