Spain’s euthanasia laws have been labelled ‘morally depraved’ after a 25-year-old woman was killed following injuries caused by a failed suicide attempt.
Noelia Castillo, who was diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder and borderline personality disorder at 13, was given the lethal drugs at Sant Camil hospital on 26 March. She was a victim of a gang-rape in 2022, and shortly after became wheelchair-bound with chronic pain due to a failed suicide attempt.
Deaths by euthanasia and assisted suicide in Spain have increased by almost 50 per cent since they were legalised in 2022. Activists are now calling for the eligibility criteria to be widened to include people struggling with mental ill health.
Legal battle
Her father tried to block her euthanasia in an 18-month-long legal battle, arguing that she lacked capacity due to her ill mental health, and pointing to “the obligation of the state to protect the lives of people, especially the most vulnerable, as is the case with a young person with mental health problems”.
But Spain’s Supreme Court upheld her ‘right to die’, and the European Court of Human Rights also rejected the father’s request for intervention.
“Spain’s euthanasia laws have plumbed new depths of moral depravity.”
The father’s attorney, who represented him in the legal battle, has raised concerns of a conflict of interest of the doctor doing the euthanasia, who allegedly was also the coordinator for Noelia’s organ donations.
Noelia gave an interview a few days before her death, saying: “I’ve told them how I want it to be. I want to die looking beautiful. I’ve always thought I want to die looking good. I’ll wear my prettiest dress and put on make-up; it will be something simple.”
The woman’s mother shared: “I am not in favour of euthanasia, of course I am not in favour, but I will always be by her side until the very last moment, as long as she allows me.”
Moral depravity
Daily Mail columnist Sarah Vine wrote that, in reference to arguments against an assisted suicide Bill, “Castillo’s case vindicates all these worries and illustrates the pitfalls starkly”.
“It is inhumanity in the drag of mercy.”
She added: “however you dress it up, that’s what this was: State-sanctioned murder, the kind that is considered barbaric when it comes to people who commit unspeakable acts of criminal violence (the death penalty was abolished in Spain in 1995) – but is apparently perfectly fine when it comes to a vulnerable young woman”.
Journalist Brendan O’Neill called Spain’s euthanasia law shameful and dehumanising, saying: “It demeans those who want to live and tempts those who want to die. It is inhumanity in the drag of mercy.”
Georgina Mumford, writing for Spiked, said that “to abandon vulnerable people at their lowest ebb is not compassion at all – it is to give up on a person who has given up on themselves”.
She added: “Spain’s euthanasia laws have plumbed new depths of moral depravity.”
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