German Woman With MS Becomes One Of First People To Take Advantage Of Spains Euthanasia Law

A German woman with multiple sclerosis (MS) has become one of the first people to take advantage of legalised euthanasia in Spain.

Doerte Lebender, 59, passed away in her small apartment on the Spanish island of Ibiza, where she arrived in 1998, after receiving a fatal injection on Wednesday, 27th October.

Spain’s euthanasia law came into effect in late June, making it only the fourth European country, after the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, to decriminalise active euthanasia.

Doerte Lebender who was suffering from Multiple sclerosis, one of the first people to make use of the euthanasia law in Spain. (Newsflash)

Lebender told Diario de Ibiza a few weeks before her death: “I’ve suffered so much, I want to go. Not that I don’t want to live – I like to live. But I can’t stand this body any longer.”

She characterised her upcoming death at the time not as suicide but as a “basic human right: to die with dignity and pain-free”.

Lebender had suffered from MS since she was 24 years old. The NHS describes it as “a condition that can affect the brain and spinal cord, causing a wide range of potential symptoms, including problems with vision, arm or leg movement, sensation or balance”. It currently has no known cure.

Doerte Lebender who was suffering from Multiple sclerosis, one of the first people to make use of the euthanasia law in Spain. (Newsflash)

Lebender’s MS was particularly serious in the later years of her life and kept her largely bound in the chair in which she died during her last four to five years, during which she required 24-hour help from a carer.

Her condition started out as mild, with Diario de Ibiza describing Lebender as an athlete, worker, mezzo-soprano and gastronomy student in the Austrian city of Salzburg during her youth.

Proponents of euthanasia characterise assisted suicide as a ‘choice’ issue and say it prevents people from dying in agony or suffering.

Doerte Lebender who was suffering from Multiple sclerosis, one of the first people to make use of the euthanasia law in Spain. (Newsflash)

However, detractors say it would lead society down a ‘slippery slope’, with assisted suicide eventually being granted to the disabled, the elderly and the depressed, with those who are not mentally competent requesting to die.

According to market research company Statista, “a 2019 survey shows that a majority of British people across all age groups supports the legalisation of assisted dying in the cases of terminal illness and extreme pain”.