Woman dies by euthanasia after becoming paraplegic trying to commit suicide after gang rape

[AComplicatedWoman]

This is one of the most heartbreaking news stories I have come across.

Noelia Castillo had a difficult childhood and spent much of it in care homes. She was sexually assaulted by her ex-boyfriend of four years after she had taken sleeping pills to help her sleep, and was assaulted on another occasion by several men in a nightclub. She attempted suicide in October 2022, and it left her unable to use her legs and in a wheelchair. Noelia conducted a long legal battle with her father for the right to end her life and she died by euthanasia on Thursday.

RIP Noelia. I am so sorry that your life was destroyed by these abhorrent abusive men.

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/noelia-castillo-euthanasia-law-spain-b2946671.html

I can’t see the Spanish girls paralysis improving can you?

I think it's likely that her paraplegia would improve with new treatments. Here's an article about stem cell therapy, which is very promising for those of us with spinal cord injuries

https://abcnews.com/GMA/Wellness/paralyzed-man-walk-shows-potential-benefit-stem-cell/story?id=108709237

Researchers are also trying to find new treatments for pain.

To me, this is one of the things that makes Noelia's case so tragic.

Who gets to decide is always the big question isn't it. Because some people basically think all disabled people and everyone who doesn't make oodles of money and perhaps takes more out than they put in should be 'put down' like animals. It'll be dressed up as 'putting them out of their misery' but of course it won't really be this.

People will be coerced into agreeing to die.

And it will be the people with power making the decisions, not the people being euthanized, in reality because that's human nature and the way the world works. And it's already happened plenty of times, Canada being the cautionary tale. It sounds like, from the case of the elderly woman who wanted palliative care but was murdered instead against her explicit wishes, that they're not even really pretending any more.

Exactly

And what a coincidence that it costs much less to put someone down than to support them with social, medical, psychological and financial interventions for the rest of their life.

It'll be dressed up as 'putting them out of their misery' but of course it won't really be this.

You see it in this thread. Quite a few people have justified this by saying that she'd never be happy, she'd never get better, etc. but there is no way to know that and it's likely to be wrong. But it makes people feel less guilty about thinking that Spain was right to kill her.

As a disabled person, it worries me that so many buy into the idea that our lives are worth so little, are hopeless, are dismal, aren't worth living, etc. She wanted to die now but almost all of us have wanted to die at some points. So few seem to ask if she realized that it takes a long to time adjust to a new disability or to accept one's rape. If she knew that almost everyone struggles for years with this - they feel hopeless - but eventually adjust and lead good lives. That there are promising new treatments for paraplegia and chronic pain. There are no guarantees but it was likely that her life would improve with support and treatment.

I really hate seeing how people think that if you're disabled and 'not contributing", it's ok to kill you as long as you're psychologically vulnerable and willing to go along with it. Then justify it as doing you a favor because your life was so sad.

And the kind of people in the position of power to enact the laws that allow state killing are the kind of successful people who think pretty much every person with a significant disability must be in pain and have miserable lives, whereas the disabled person I'm closest to has an amazing life, despite their chronic pain and inability to walk.

I don't think that the benefits to a few of being able to have state assisted death outweigh the risks that large numbers of people, including the disabled, will be murdered by the state because it's cheaper than providing meaningful support to live.

@GenderlessVoid
As a disabled person, it worries me that so many buy into the idea that our lives are worth so little, are hopeless, are dismal, aren't worth living, etc. [....] I really hate seeing how people think that if you're disabled and 'not contributing", it's ok to kill you as long as you're psychologically vulnerable and willing to go along with it. Then justify it as doing you a favor because your life was so sad.
I've noticed for a long time - primed by the experience of knowing the wheelchair user I mentioned upthread - that films and novels often seem to have a real problem with dealing with disabled characters, who often act out their part and are then bumped off. I assume that this is because the author can't imagine that they might just have proper lives like other people. I think (hope) it's got better over the years.

Having known a disabled person who was very clever and very funny, with a full and rounded life, I've been massively pissed off by many of the portrayals of 'disability' that I've come across over the years.

It is worrying the number of people wanting to give the state the right to kill them when certain boxes are ticked. Has everyone forgotten the brief window during Covid where patients with learning disabilities, Down Syndrome, Autism etc were mysteriously triaged as Do not attempt to resuscitate? This was by health care professionals following murky unquestioned orders on triage rules. It all got reverted and everyone was very sorry but that happened. Once you let the "it's okay to kill me" genie out of the box scope creep and misinterpretation is inevitable. Upthread someone wanted it because they couldn't get a job, Imagine going to the job centre and they're like sort your affairs out and we'll see you in a fortnight for some existence affirming care.

She was apparently permanently in pain due to the suicide attempt (throwing herself off a 5 storey building).

This is such a heartbreaking story. She was failed at every turn.
We should be fixing society, not offering death to people who have been broken by it.

Absolutely horrific, that poor young girl. Yet, Keir promised Ester he bring in assisted dying here 😡🤬

Should be, should be, should be. But we don't.

I think it's a horror that people would force a woman living in unbearable physical and mental pain to carry on, instead of respecting her stated (and prrviously acted on) wishes.

Yes, Canada's got it very wrong but there should be a measured and kind and reasoned approach, as there is in the Netherlands. Canada's gone far too far one way; to say self-chosen euthanasia should never be permitted is just as cruel the other way.

Are you sure they've got it right in the Netherlands?

https://archive.ph/g6am1

https://archive.ph/VzQNJ

I would support a 'measured and kind and reasoned' approach @ReleaseTheDucksOfWar but I'm not sure there are (m)any offerings from the state that currently meet that description consistently so I'm not convinced we're capable of it just now. I think we need to do a lot more work on ourselves as a society before we can even contemplate putting something like this in place.

'Force to carry on living' is a strange way of putting it.

You mean 'refusing a request to kill'.

I guess it depends how much people trust the state, its mechanisms, policies, rationale, procedures, as to whether bureaucratic systems are capable of making the right choices. Or whether its acceptable that some 'mistakes' will be made.

I dont believe the death penalty is a good idea for broadly similar reasons.

I think forced fits when there is an alternative option that you are denied despite your wishes.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-45117163

Young people with depressive illness should not be eligible for euthanasia.

There are always alternative options. People can kill themselves at any point.

The state killing people on request is crossing several lines that we need to look at very, very carefully.

The argument seems to place some people's suffering above others. Those who demand the 'right' to be killed by the state against those who will be killed when they do not have capacity to give consent.

We can use extreme hypotheticals - should a toddler shouting that they hate themselves and want to die be put down? Because they have had a traumatic if short life? No? Teenagers? How many teenagers are depressed, self harm, go through very difficult times? Act impulsively, take risks, fail to consider consequences?

So - move on to young adults. At what age does a suffering young person gain the capacity and awareness to know that their suffering is temporary, and suicide is a permanent solution?

How common is suucidal ideation among teens and young people and at what point do we grant the right to death? Logically, to any person who asks for it at any time?

Another one

https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/may/16/dutch-woman-euthanasia-approval-grounds-of-mental-suffering

I had thought those were hypothetical extremes.

Age of 12, in the Netherlands.

www.government.nl/topics/euthanasia/is-euthanasia-allowed#anker-3-euthanasia-and-minors

'Euthanasia and minors

A child may request euthanasia from the age of 12. However, the following additional requirements apply:

the child must be capable of assessing and understanding what is best for them in their situation;'

Jesus H.

This is the crux of the debate.

It is clear that any state 'assisted dying' would and is (in other countries) used to murder people with less agency and less power. Why are those people's lives less worthy than the people who activists claim will be 'helped'.

I'm against the death penalty and against state assisted dying.

But if we're arguing for the latter then the parallel to the death penalty must be explored. I don't want either but I really don't want to live in a world where an elderly ill woman is murdered because she at one time agreed to die but then clearly asked for palliative care instead but this was overruled and convicted killers get to live at the state's expense in perpetuity.

If we're killing people and saving the state money then that needs to be looked at too. Wayne Couzens, Axel Rudakabana, child rapists. Why should they get to live when an elderly person, disabled person or depressed person is killed to save costs? Plenty of prisoners say they want to die too, will they be allowed in this dystopia?

Terrifying and obviously morally wrong.