Spanish film put focus on euthanasia
By CNN's Al Goodman
 |  Ramon Sampedro was played in the film by actor Javier Bardem. |
| |
|  VIDEO |
 The political and rhetorical lines drawn in the battle over Terri Schiavo may not be as clear as they appear.
|
|
MADRID, Spain (CNN) -- The film "Mar Adentro" -- or "The Sea Inside" -- tells the true story of a quadriplegic who wanted to end his life, and in the process became Spain's most famous case of euthanasia.
The movie asks: Did this man, Ramon Sampedro, have the right to say his life belonged to him, and no-one else?
Director Alejandro Amenabar said: "What we wanted to show was that this man, after 30 years, decides he wants to die and he doesn't seem to us like someone who was unstable, as some people have suggested."
Ramon Sampedro was paralyzed below the neck in a diving accident. He was able to smoke only if someone put a cigarette in his mouth, as depicted in the film. He learned how to write holding a pen between his teeth.
And he went to court to ask for the right to commit assisted suicide. His plea was rejected. But he got friends to help anyway.
In January 1998, he was videotaped drinking poison -- and making his final statement: "You have liberated me from the most humiliating of slaveries, being a live head stuck to a dead body."
Socialist party official Matilde Valentin says there are no plans to legalize assisted suicide in Spain -- but nor does she agree with the way the Schiavo case has been handled.
"Suddenly the president and the Congress pass a law to change the legal situation. These hurried decisions, without consensus, can't solve the problem," he said.
Various opinion polls in the past decade have shown a majority of Spaniards favor decriminalizing assisted suicide. In one poll even a majority of Spanish doctors say terminally ill patients should have the option of euthanasia.
On the streets of Madrid, the consensus seems to be against prolonging life unnaturally.
The Catholic Church says that God's will must be allowed to prevail.
Juan Antonio Martinez Camino, of the Spanish Bishops Conference, said: "The position of the church is that death cannot be provoked. Nor can it be absurdly delayed. Death has its time -- its natural time."
Ramon Sampedro chose his time. Terri Schiavo has no such power.
