Huelva, Spain, Aug 30, 2011 / 15:22 pm
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.”