Chile: Cardinal defends the right to die in peace before euthanasia project

While the National Government of Chile advances in the promises carried out by President Gabriel Boric to speed up the abortion and euthanasia bill, the Church remains firm in the defense of life from conception to natural death.

The Archbishop of Santiago and Cardinal Primado de Chile, Fernando Chomali, published A column entitled “Die in peace”in which he elaborates a reflection on this topic. “Euthanasia is a form of social eugenics against the inability to empathize, accompany, love and respond for them,” he said.

The indications to the bill

Last Thursday, the Boric government entered new indications to the euthanasia bill admitted almost 14 years ago in the Chamber of Deputies.

The initiativeentitled “Bill on the right to voluntarily opt for medical assistance in order to accelerate death in case of terminal and incurable disease ”is currently in the Senate Health Commission, explains the Biobio Portal.

Among the modifications raised by the Government, the right of the patient is eliminated to receive spiritual accompaniment according to their faith, the objection of institutional consciousness is suppressed and the places where the procedure can be carried out, including the home, can be carried out, including the home.

The project also incorporates new formal demands, such as the written and repeated will of the patient, and an evaluation committee of the case, but proposes “medical assistance to die” as a regular provision of the health system.

If this project is approved, Chile will enter the small group of countries that allow euthanasia, among which are Belgium, Canada, Netherlands, Spain and Australia, and would become the third in Latin America in having legislative matter on the subject, in addition to Colombia and Ecuador.

In this regard, Cardinal Chomali described the current scenario in Chile, characterized by violence, corruption, insecurity, and long waiting lists to obtain medical treatments. In that context, the purple warned: “It reappears, and with immediate processing, a bill that allows the direct elimination of a human being in the final stage of his life: euthanasia bill.”

Behind the idea of ​​”dignified death,” said the purple, “there is the idea of ​​having the lives of others in their terminal stage.” The project, which has been admitted for years, “you want to dispatch in less than a week,” he said.

A “practical response to the neglect of the State”

In this regard, he questioned: “Could anyone explain the urgency? Will there be time to listen to experts in the field and for legislators to study the subject and know the dire experiences of some countries that have introduced this practice?”

This bill, said the cardinal, “is ambiguous because it extends to people in complex health situations, who, according to the promoters of the law, as their lives would not be worth living, the State cannot prevent them from ending with it.”

“This parliamentary initiative appeals to autonomy and individual freedom as an absolute right that must be respected, even knowing that, in these circumstances, it is what is most lacking,” he observed.

This law, considered the archbishop, “is the practical response to the neglect of the State and society to take care of the sick, in most older adult cases, which many of them end their old, alone, sick and poor days. Many in public hospitals, and in places that we do not even imagine, prostrate and abandoned in poor conditions.”

With euthanasia, a patient’s drama is resolved violently

“It alludes to euthanasia as an act of compassion,” he lamented, and warned: “Let’s not get confused, it is an act of compassion towards Western society that measures everything in terms of production, joy, success and gain and that does not support anything that has to do with pain and suffering and less responsible for it.”

“This project is the decline of the sense of responsibility towards the weak that fits the whole society and is the triumph of the reason for the force over the force of reason,” he reflected.

According to Cardinal Chomali, “with euthanasia the drama of a severely ill person is resolved with violence – covered with the mantle of goodness, compassion, autonomy, etc.—”.

A class project

On the other hand, he indicated that it is a bill “classist”, because especially in the poor it is possible that “third parties decide for them to end their days.”

“The truth is that who is accompanied, feels loved and well cared for, does not ask to end their days, on the contrary, they cling to life and their loved ones like a great treasure until the end,” said the purple.

As an example, he mentioned the Las Rosas Foundation – which offers reception to the poorest and most helpless elderly – “where ever a resident, even prostrated, has been going through the mind to ask them to end their lives.”

As if that were not enough, he warned, “Medicine students, who usually enter the university motivated to heal, accompany and care, will be taught how to end the life of an innocent human being.”

“Chile is impoverished with a similar law because the mood of a society is measured in the capacity of the social fabric – from which we are part – to worry about the defenseless and vulnerable,” he insisted.

The obstinacy to promote laws that undermine the weakest

Finally, the Archbishop invited the promoters of this “unjust law” to pay attention to the elderly in unfortunate situations – clandestine children, without social life and abandoned -, while encouraging them to “raise legislative flight to promote the specialty of palliative care in hospitals and clinics and places where they end their days, as well as promote solid public policies in favor of older adults in favor of adults, access. to mental and palliative health care. ”

“Let’s propose laws that allow the sick to die in peace, let’s take care of them with the ordinary media provided by medicine, without abusive technicalities, together with their relatives and with adequate medical, spiritual and human assistance,” he proposed.

Then, he urged: “Let us seriously ask what is behind the obstinacy to promote laws that threaten the weakest of society, such as human beings in the womb and on the bed of sick and at the same time.”

“Are we not promoting the law of the strongest and violence to solve human dramas, sometimes dramatic, which is nothing other than renouncing the rule of law that has cost so much to install?” The archbishop concluded.