Spain’s bishops call for day of prayer in protest as Madrid prepares to approve controversial euthanasia law

Spain's Catholic leaders have called for a day of prayer to protest the new, proposed euthanasia laws

Credit: NACHO DOCE /REUTERS

Spanish Catholic leaders called on the country’s faithful to take part in a day of fasting and prayer on Wednesday in a last-ditch bid to prevent Spain’s parliament from voting in favour of legalising euthanasia on Thursday.  

Cardinal Antonio Cañizares, Bishop of Valencia, was due to hold a vigil inviting all believers in any Christian or other religions to unite in prayer so that a law he called “cruel and inhumane […] may be suspended or not passed at the last minute”.   

But miracles aside, Spain’s Left-wing coalition government appears to have sufficient support to support a law it says will allow only patients whose lives are unbearable due to chronic and incurable illness to be euthanized under strict medical supervision and control.  

The law would make Spain the fifth country in the world to legalise euthanasia nationwide, along with the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and Canada, while some US states also permit it or assisted suicide.  

The proposed legislation would allow patients who suffer from "a serious and incurable disease" or "a serious, chronic and disabling disease” that is causing “intolerable” suffering to ask their doctor to trigger the process. 

That doctor must seek a second opinion from an independent specialist before a committee of health professionals must sign off on the decision to end the patient’s life or supply pharmaceuticals to facilitate suicide.

Pro-euthanasia protesters gather outside a Madrid courthouse holding banners that read 'Nobody decides for me' and 'I decide how and when to die'

Credit: Paul White /AP

The process is only available to adults who reside legally in Spain.

The main conservative Popular Party opposes the bill, which it describes as “unfair, inopportune and unconstitutional”, instead asking for greater development of palliative care for incurable patients.  

Iván Espinosa, chief spokesman of the far-Right Vox, accused the government of installing a “death cult”, and the party has warned Spaniards that children of the elderly and vulnerable could use the law to bump off their relatives, despite the fact that patients would have to assert their wish to die on several occasions.  

In cases where a person can no longer communicate, prior written instructions could be presented by a legal guardian to request euthanasia.  

Ángel Hernández, a pensioner who moved millions last year when he filmed the process of ending the life of his wife, María José Carrasco, a multiple sclerosis patient, said he had been self-isolating devotedly during the Covid pandemic. 

“I don’t leave the house because I promised María José I would live to see the day the law was passed,” Mr Hernández told the newspaper La Vanguardia.      

Spain’s Association for the Right to Die with Dignity said in a statement that the law would place Spain “in the vanguard of countries in terms of civil rights”, and cited support for a regulation of euthanasia of more than 80 per cent in various polls.