![]() ![]() Many Latin American countries are transforming their laws on social issues amid growing ambivalence over the influence of the Catholic Church in the region. But perhaps more remarkable was what happened next: The three government agencies in the case decided not to appeal. In a historic decision, a court in Lima ruled in her favor. ![]() With Peru’s ombudsman’s office, she filed a lawsuit seeking to stop the government from enforcing Peru’s euthanasia ban in her case. She started working with a lawyer to take her case to court. In 2019, she launched her blog about her search for “death with dignity,” and found herself an advocate for the cause. Travel would require the support of a family member, and she was terrified that her loved ones could face prison time if they were caught. If she reached the point at which she wanted euthanasia, she realized, she would have to get a clandestine procedure or travel to one of the seven countries worldwide where the practice is legal. “What I’m asking is to have the power and the control, and that my life belongs to me - it doesn’t belong to the state,” she said. If she had that right, she thought, perhaps she might never need to even use it. If the suffering became too much to bear, she wanted to know she had an escape. Her time in the ICU showed her what it was like to want to die - to beg to die - and she vowed never to reach that point again. That was when she started considering euthanasia. She returned to the ICU for a month the following year. RIGHT: With the aid of a nurse, Estrada fixes her hair. LEFT: One of her nurses helps Estrada with her lunch. With the aid of a nurse, Estrada fixes her hair. She quit her job and gave up her cat for adoption. She started relying on a ventilator, a feeding tube and 24-hour assistance from a team of nurses. What little independence she had left was taken from her. Then, in 2015, complications from pneumonia sent her to the ICU. She eventually saved enough money to buy an apartment blocks from the ocean in Lima’s upscale Miraflores neighborhood. She began working at a psychoanalysis clinic and rented an apartment around the corner, living with her full-time nurse and her cat. After falling and spraining an ankle, she never again showered without help, she would write in a blog post, “and never again could I feel the texture of my own skin.”īut as her body failed, her psychology studies made her realize how much she was still capable of. She could use only her right hand to wash her hair, so she would rub the other side of her head against the wall, tears falling down her face. The last time Estrada took a shower by herself was more than two decades ago. By the time she graduated, she needed a live-in assistant. At 20, she started using a wheelchair - her classmates would help push her across her university campus. She retreated from friends and dreaded being seen by her boyfriend, her first love. In late high school, her treatments caused her to become bloated, and she fell into a depression. She began feeling a weakness all over her body, and at 14, she was diagnosed with polymyositis. She wanted to be independent, to travel, to live in her own apartment. Growing up in a conservative Catholic family and attending a high school run by nuns, she was tired of having values or expectations imposed on her. With her head resting on her pillow, Estrada smiled slightly as she explained, again, what so many people still don’t understand: She doesn’t actually want to die.Įstrada had always dreamed of living alone.Īs a girl, she wasn’t interested in getting married or having children. “Why would you surrender now,” a judge asked, “and not continue with this fight?” They would ask questions she’d heard many times over the four years since she began her crusade: Aren’t there other medical treatments she could turn to? If she had made it this far, through 45 years and a successful career, why give up? The decision was now before Peru’s Supreme Court of Justice for a final review, and this hearing in mid-January would be Estrada’s last opportunity to speak for herself before the judges would decide. Last year, a constitutional court in Lima ruled in her favor, making her the first and only person to be granted an exception to a national ban on euthanasia, a stunning development in a majority-Catholic country where a doctor can be sentenced to three years in prison for administering euthanasia, and where elective abortion and same-sex marriage remain illegal. For three decades, she had struggled with polymyositis, a condition that slowly robbed her of the ability to walk, to move her arms, to breathe on her own for more than a few hours a day. ![]()
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