Bishop describes Spanish family's decision as act of euthanasia

The Bishop of Huelva, Spain is declaring the decision to remove food
and water from a 90-year-old comatose woman an act of euthanasia.

“Any
action aimed at interrupting food and hydration constitutes an act of
euthanasia, in which death is produced not through illness but through
the bringing about of hunger and thirst,” Bishop Jose Vilaplana said in
an Aug. 26 statement.

Bishop Vilaplana’s comments came in
response to a decision by the family members of 90 year-old Ramona
Estevez to remove her feeding tube. She suffered a stroke on July 26
that has left her in a coma for over a month.

Estevez has since
been hospitalized in the city of Huelva, and on August 23 officials from
the health department in the province of Andalusia granted her family
members’ request to stop providing food.

Speaking to Europa
Press, the woman’s son, Jose Ramon Paez, said the family was carrying
out his mother’s wishes. The spokesman for the Socialist Party in
Huelva, Mario Jimenez, said the removal of the feeding tube was in
accord with the “death with dignity law.”

“The law was followed, which in this country comes before religious ideas,” he said.

A
request by the Spanish Right to Life organization to have the feeding
tube reinserted was denied.  The organization said it would file a
lawsuit against the head of Anadalusia’s health department, Maria Jesus
Montero, for possibly violating the right to conscientious objection and
for criminally withdrawing care from Ramona Estevez.

In his
statement, Bishop Vilaplana said, “We must always be on the side of
human life, no matter what its stage of development or existential
situation.”  

“We must support those who are last, the weak, the
handicapped, in order to ensure that their rights, especially the right
to life, are respected,” he said.

The bishop noted that even
though some people have tried to portray the removal of Estevez’s
feeding tube as a humane act, “(t)he only duty society has with regards
to the sick is help them to live, as life is not something we use and
throw away.”

The Huelva bishop also asserted that the dignity of
human life “must not be linked to the state of consciousness or
unconsciousness of someone who is sick.”

“It is not the duty of a
doctor to suspend the food and hydration of a person who is a
vegetative state, which is a chronic illness that does not cause death,”
he added, noting that health care workers have the right to exercise
conscientious objection against such decisions.

“Let us
accompany Ramona Estevez during her last days in silence and prayer.
With great humility, I pray sincerely to the Lord for the family members
and people around her, that they may discover in her the mysterious
strength of life, which can be perceived even in the body of someone who
is elderly, in a coma and weak, and that they might rethink their
decisions,” Bishop Vilaplana said.

“Deliberately seeking out
death or inducing it, as Benedict XVI has said so many times, is not the
answer to the drama of suffering,” he insisted.

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