A young activist’s plea for “compassion over punishment” is reshaping Mexico’s national conversation about death and dignity.
Some people tell Samara Martinez, a young Mexican woman dying from several diseases, including kidney failure, she should just allow herself to die by stopping her daily dialysis treatment.
Her response is chilling. “I would take 15 days to die, but those would be 15 days of agony and suffering because your whole body is poisoned. You can drown in your own liquids. It is a very undignified death.”
That is why she’s fighting to get her country to make euthanasia – “mercy killing” – part of the law.
And that’s an uphill battle in a conservative, Catholic-dominated state.
With 400 000 followers on social media, she has taken the debate mainstream, not only in Mexico but in other countries.
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Legal assisted suicide is still rare across the globe, but attitudes are changing slowly.
While there is fear it can be abused, it is increasingly being seen as a humane gift for the dying.
It is awful to imagine that a person who has had a fulfilled, happy life is put through such suffering and pain in their last days that everything that went before is almost cancelled out.
Maybe the world needs to change and, as Martinez says: “It is time we stopped penalising compassion.”
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