By Samantha Schmidt and Diana Durán
It began with a strange feeling in her hand, a weakness in the thumb that made it difficult to hold a pen or grip a computer mouse.
In November 2018, a doctor gave Martha Sepúlveda her diagnosis: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the progressive neurological disease known in the United States as Lou Gehrig’s disease. In the months that followed, the Colombian woman lost control of the muscles in her legs — and she knew it would only get worse.
She would cry at night, overwhelmed by the thought. “What happens once I can no longer get into bed or use the bathroom without help?” she would ask her son. “How far am I going to go?”
Sepúlveda started reading about an option that could relieve her fear of what was to come: Euthanasia. Colombia, she learned, is the only country in Latin America — and one of only a few worldwide — that permits patients to end their lives.
Until this year, the option has been available legally only to those who are expected to live for six months or less. On Sunday, Sepúlveda, who considers herself a devout Catholic, plans to become the first person in Colombia without a terminal prognosis to die by legally authorized euthanasia.
Colombia’s constitutional court ruled in July that the right to euthanasia — recognized here in 1997 — applies not only to terminal patients, but also to those with “intense physical or mental suffering from bodily injury or serious and incurable disease.”
The ruling has divided the faithful in this majority-Catholic country. Church officials have described euthanasia as a “serious offense” to the dignity of human life; a member of the national bishops’ conference urged Sepúlveda to “calmly reflect” on her decision and invited all Catholics to pray that God will grant her mercy.
But Sepúlveda, 51, has been resolute in her response to those who question her plan — or her faith.
“I know that God is the owner of life,” she told Colombia’s Caracol News. “But God doesn’t want to see me suffer.”
This South American nation is an unlikely pioneer in euthanasia. An estimated 73 percent of the population is Catholic. Eleven Catholic feast days are national holidays. Access to abortion is sharply limited.
And yet Colombia was one of the first countries in the world to decriminalize euthanasia, and one of only a small number — alongside Belgium and the Netherlands — to extend the right to non-terminal patients. No U.S. state permits euthanasia; 10 states and the District of Columbia allow medically assisted suicide for terminally ill, mentally capable adults with a prognosis of six months or less to live.
Now, advocates here are hoping their movement will spread across Latin America, according to Camila Jaramillo, a lawyer representing Sepúlveda with the Laboratory of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (DescLAB). Campaigns are underway in Uruguay and Chile. In Peru this year, Lima’s superior court ruled that a woman with polymyositis should be permitted to die by euthanasia when she decides she is ready.
How did a country of Catholics, often led by center-right politicians, become a leader in euthanasia rights?
Eduardo Díaz Amado, director of the Bioethics Institute at Pontifical Xavierian University in Bogotá, traces the development to the country’s long civil war and the violence wrought by drug lord Pablo Escobar. In 1991, in response to the country’s instability, Colombia rewrote its constitution. Unlike its “paternalistic” predecessor, Díaz said, the new constitution expanded individual rights, emphasized “the respect of human dignity” and underscored the separation of church and state.
The document also established a constitutional court to help define these newly recognized rights. Within six years, the new court, now with several progressive judges, took up a case from a plaintiff who argued that “mercy killings” should carry the same penalty as any other homicide.
The court disagreed. Instead of increasing the penalty, it moved to decriminalize euthanasia — becoming the only country to do so on the basis of constitutional arguments, Díaz said.
But it took more than 15 years for authorities to apply the ruling. As political leaders sought to avoid the subject, doctors such as Gustavo Quintana met growing demand for the practice. Known as the “doctor of death,” Quintana is said to have provided euthanasia to close to 400 patients before his recent death.
In 2014, the court ordered the government to issue guidelines so that hospitals, insurers and health professionals would know how to proceed with euthanasia requests.
The movement for euthanasia rights has drawn unexpected allies: Catholic priests. Alberto Múnera, a theology professor and Jesuit priest at the Pontifical Xavierian University in Bogotá, lectures his students on the “exceptions” to the “absolute value of human life” in church teaching. When Catholics follow their own consciences, even when that means choosing to end their own lives, he argues, they will “behave well” in the eyes of God.
Since the government began regulating the practice in 2015, 157 people have died by euthanasia in Colombia, according to official data. One hundred and forty-one had some type of cancer. But many others, including Sepúlveda initially, were denied requests because their illnesses were not deemed terminal in the short term. Last year, a team of lawyers filed a lawsuit asking the constitutional court to extend the right to patients with non-terminal diagnoses.
The court went further, recognizing a right to euthanasia for those with “intense physical and mental suffering.” That was a surprise even for the lawyers, who did not mention mental illness in their complaint. And it drew immediate rebuke from church leaders and conservative politicians.
“It opens up the possibility for people who are depressed or simply don’t want to live anymore,” said Sen. María del Rosario Guerra, a member of the Democratic Center party of President Iván Duque. “We are promoting a culture of death
Bishop Francisco Ceballos, a leader within the national bishops’ conference, has criticized news outlets here for depicting Sepúlveda “heading toward death with so much joy.” He has emphasized the church’s support for palliative care as an alternative to euthanasia. “We believe that death cannot be the solution to suffering and pain,” he said.
The court’s ruling in July came less than a month after the death of Yolanda Chaparro, a 71-year-old Colombian woman with ALS who had requested euthanasia a year earlier but was rejected because her prognosis was not deemed terminal. She continued to deteriorate until she could no longer breathe without oxygen, struggled to move on her own, and lived with a fear that she could drown in her own saliva, according to her daughter. She was granted her wish to end her life in June.
Shortly before her death, Chaparro sat down with her relatives to explain her decision. “For me, to live is to fly,” she said, in an interview recorded by relatives. “To live is to walk, to create. To live is to commit to dreams you’ve formed your whole life. So seeing that each day everything is more difficult … all of that is over.”
When Federico Redondo Sepúlveda learned of the court ruling, he broke down in tears. The 22-year-old law student, Martha’s only child, had spent months helping his mother file a request for euthanasia.
“I didn’t think it would happen so soon,” he said. He had tried to find the strength to support his mother in what for him has been an excruciating choice.
“She kept saying the same thing, that if I loved her then I would support her,” he said.
They have spent his mother’s final days mostly watching Netflix — a joy she discovered during the coronavirus pandemic. They’ve watched and re-watched “The Pianist,” “Forrest Gump,” and “The Shawshank Redemption,” movies that remind them of years past.
The family doesn’t have special plans for his mother’s final night Saturday. She hopes to spend it as she always does, by going to bed early. She plans to end her life at 7 a.m. on Sunday, when she would normally be heading to church. Her son will be the only person in the room with her, he said.
Her body is to be cremated immediately. Federico plans to spread her ashes in the Caribbean Sea, off Colombia’s northern coast. But first, he will join with their family, her remains beside him, and take the Eucharist
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