While the palliative care law was voted this week in a health commission, legislators from the Broad Front and the Colorado Party intend to vote on the euthanasia bill later. In this context, the Frente Amplio deputy Cristina Lustemberg stated that a “broader” euthanasia bill should be voted on that contemplates this “right” in children and adolescents and in “people with mental health problems.”
“I think we have to go a step further than the project, which Deputy Ope Pasquet presents with great courage and respect, we have to go to a law that guarantees the rights of people, we still do not contemplate two major issues that According to our personal vision, the right of children and adolescents maintaining progressive autonomy, the Code that is in force and the right of people with some mental health impairment, “said Lustemberg at the conference that is published in the Youtube of Empatía Uruguay, an organization that promotes the legalization of euthanasia.
The deputy said that “a secular country in a rule of law must ensure access to the two options: palliative care and euthanasia and assisted suicide above any personal belief and honoring individual freedom, a government that speaks of the freedom must preserve the freedom of the person to decide “.
Consulted by The Observer He preferred not to make statements and excused himself in that it is his personal opinion, not at the FA level. She said that “it is something that she understands must be done but it has not yet been raised.”
Miguel Pastorino, the spokesman for Prudencia, the group of professionals from various fields and parties that was formed to promote a debate against euthanasia, expressed his concern about “the misinformation and confusion that exist around the issue.” Asked about the Lustemberg proposal, he said that “in a language full of euphemisms, practices that violate the foundations of Human Rights and that violate the inherent dignity of every human being are called ´rights´.”
“We are concerned about this type of idea, which in other countries is leading to death the most vulnerable and unprotected, the disabled and the elderly dependent on permanent care, who are convinced that their life is not a dignified life and culturally naturalizes the dismissal of people; we are concerned that Uruguay is already thinking of going down this path of dehumanization of medicine, “he added.
“Discrimination and censorship”
Pastorino said that the Deputies’ health commission has received all pro-euthanasia movements in Uruguay between May and July, but Prudencia Uruguay has not only had the only scheduled hearing suspended, but it has been postponed indefinitely after a year of requesting it. “It seeks to silence the discrepancy and opposition to euthanasia and assisted suicide through fallacies, euphemisms and direct discrimination and censorship” the group, said in an act that was held for the first year of Prudencia in the Zorrilla room, in the that white and red legislators participated, and people from different areas that comprise it.
One of them was the former senator and former minister Pedro Bordaberry, who chose to quote the poem Los Justos by one of his favorite authors Jorge Luis Borges to say that those who defend life are those who are saving the world.
For his part, Álvaro Aunchain, general coordinator of the National Institute of Performing Arts, said that on this issue there are “on one side” those who promote “a culture of life and on the other those who promote the culture of death.” He questioned “the lightness with which assisted suicide was handled in the midst of the pandemic when 60 Uruguayans were dying a day. The culture of death is permeated in our society.”
“Euthanasia is one more pearl of that necklace,” he said, adding: “It is a fight in which we have to continue. I continue from the most complete agnosticism,” he clarified.
