What are the rights of someone in Ramón's position? Unlike Terri Schiavo, he is competent, and there is no doubt about his wishes, but he is disabled and thus requires the help of others to realize them. Most nations and states outlaw euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, and in the rare exceptions--the USA's state of Oregon, for instance--the legal provisions tend not to apply, because Ramón is not dying. Finally, Ramón is not being kept alive by medical interventions, so it is hard to argue that the medical establishment is wrongfully keeping him alive and should desist.

What's keeping Ramón alive is his family's love and devotion and their strongly principled refusal to cooperate in his intentional dying. In the face of their passion, Ramón's repeated wish to die, whatever its personal validity, seems weak and occasionally a bit ungrateful--yet, of course, it is his wish. Should he be denied it simply because he is disabled? The film is broadly pro-euthanasia, but one of its finest effects is the ambivalence it creates in us in response to the wide range of strongly held opinions that the film presents as valid.

Only the anti-euthanasia views of the Catholic Church and the indifference of the courts seem ironically deflated. (In a story with many parallels, Richard Dreyfuss's quadriplegic character in the film Whose Life Is It Anyway? succeeds in persuading a U.S. court that he has the right to die, with his dependence on dialysis providing an easier target for the argument of wrongful life.)

Spanish law, with the state and perhaps the Catholic Church underlying it, is a major factor in both the film and the historical story. Sampedro's real physician apparently agreed that his patient had the rights he sought, but he refused to break the law by collaborating with his patient. When Sampedro lost his appeals to Spanish courts, he took his case to the European Commission of Human Rights, but received no satisfaction. (He did not travel to Holland, where notably liberal attitudes toward euthanasia might have helped him.)

Ramón in the film is very concerned with the legal consequences that might be suffered by those who assist him. In real life, the woman called Rosa in the film waited seven years for Spain's statute of limitations to expire before speaking to the press about what she and ten others did to help Sampedro achieve his goal. (Sampedro divided up the task of assisting him so finely to reduce each person's contribution to a size he hoped would not be prosecutable.)

Although Sampedro became something of a popular hero to many Spaniards, the country was fiercely divided by his case, and there is apparently some possibility that the state will try to reopen the case to prosecute "Rosa." Sampedro's story is certainly a sad one, but both versions of it are rich with cultural and more broadly human drama--and the relation between the two stories would make an interesting subject by itself.

(Readers wishing to pursue this subject may search this database under keywords such as "Death and Dying," "Disability," "Euthanasia," "Law and Medicine," and "Suicide." For links see Keywords above.)