A Spanish woman who became paraplegic following a failed suicide attempt has subsequently become able to have her life ended by euthanasia.
According to legal rulings, the 25-year-old woman has a psychiatric illness and has attempted to take her own life several times by overdosing on medication. In October 2022, she attempted to take her life by jumping from a fifth-floor window; she survived, but has been living with paraplegia and chronic pain ever since.
Subsequently, the woman requested to have her life ended by euthanasia, which was approved by a specialist in Catalonia in July 2024.
However, the woman’s father had been able to block her life from being ended due to arguing that her mental illness impeded her ability to make a free and informed decision regarding ending her life.
On Friday 20 February, Spain’s Constitutional Court rejected an appeal by her father to prevent the woman from ending her life by euthanasia.
A group of lawyers who support the father have said they intend to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights.
“We will not abandon these parents. We will continue to fight to the end to defend their right to save their daughter’s life”, the group’s leader, Polonia Castellanos, said.
Euthanasia and assisted suicide deaths in Spain increased by almost 30% in 2024 amid calls to widen eligibility to include mental illnesses
This case comes in a context where Spain has experienced an almost 30% increase in assisted suicide and euthanasia in 2024 compared with the previous year, according to newly released data.
Released at the end of last year, the statistics have revealed that 426 people ended their own lives by assisted suicide or euthanasia in Spain in 2024, a 27.54% increase from 2023, when 334 people ended their lives in this way. The total number of individuals who have ended their lives by assisted suicide or euthanasia has increased by 47.92% since 2022, the first full year after its legalisation.
Unlike in some other jurisdictions, there is no six or twelve-month prognosis limit for eligibility for assisted suicide or euthanasia in Spain.
According to the Diario Médico journal, the Spanish government’s Ministry of Health had considered modifying the “Manual of Good Practices for Euthanasia” to include mental illnesses in 2024. The draft of the planned change stated that the Organic Law for the Regulation of Euthanasia “does not exclude mental illness, allowing people with an unbearable suffering due to the presence of a mental illness to request [state-assisted suicide or euthanasia] on equal terms with those whose suffering comes from a bodily illness”.
Spokesperson for Right To Life UK, Catherine Robinson, said “This is a tragic case of a woman who unsuccessfully tried to end her own life, and will now, it seems, likely be provided state assistance in doing so”.
“This is incredibly alarming in the context of the assisted suicide Bill in England and Wales, the eligibility criteria for which could be widened if it were to become law. Peers must work together to prevent this by ensuring that the Bill never becomes law”.
