LETTER FROM CUZCO
A few hours before the Peruvian Supreme Court rules on Ana Estrada’s case, Josefina Miro Quesada, one of her lawyers, said she was confident. “The media coverage of Ana, her story, affected public opinion, she told us. It made it possible not to fall into an abstract debate on euthanasia – which can generate fear in people because of their religious convictions –, but to show a single combat, which succeeded in generating empathy”, believes the lawyer.
Me Miro Quesada was right. On July 14, the highest court in the country, confirmed by four votes against two the initial decision of a superior court of justice, dated February 22, 2021, giving the right to Ana Estrada to resort to an assisted death. “when the time is right”.
A first in Peru, which makes this stop an event “historic”, judged the Office of the People’s Advocate, which supported this fight. A “conquest of human rights”, what is more, in a conservative, predominantly Catholic country, where “the State, although secular, undergoes the interference of religion in the practice of public decisions”, reminds the lawyer. Rights for freedom to decide are slim. Abortion, even in the case of rape, is prohibited and punishable by law.
In her wheelchair, Ana Estrada, who has suffered from a degenerative disease since she was 12, received the news with emotion. This woman, a psychology graduate, suffers from polymyositis (family of myopathies), a rare and incurable disease, which causes inflammation of the muscles and generates breathing difficulties. This forces him to be intubated to breathe and eat. Since the age of 20, she has moved around in a wheelchair and stays in bed most of the time. In 2015, his state of health worsened. She contracts pneumonia which leads her to intensive care for a year. Weakened, she sinks into a deep depression. “It’s like being a prisoner in my own body, twenty-four hours a day,” she writes on her blog, which she has been keeping since 2019.
The right to a “dignified death”
Ana Estrada then launches a petition for “choose when to die”, which gives him some media coverage in Peru. During the February 2021 hearings, she spoke to recall the meaning of her fight. “I’m not asking to be left to die, I’m asking for a right to choose when I don’t want to live anymore. To decide when and how to end my pain, when the disease has advanced to an unbearable point. I need to know that I have this tool, this opportunity, and that no one will be prosecuted or convicted for helping me. »
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