Doerte Lebender, a 59-year-old German woman suffering from multiple sclerosis, died yesterday at 12.45pm after being euthanised at her own home in the centre of Ibiza. Lebender was diagnosed with the progressive, degenerative neurological disease, which affects the central nervous system, when she was 24 years old, although it did not become serious until a decade ago. Following the enactment on 25th June of Organic Law 3/2021, approved on 24th March, regulating euthanasia, Lebender submitted an official request on 18th July to be granted the “assisted dying service”, on the grounds that she met the requirements of this legislation: “Serious, chronic and disabling suffering or serious and incurable illness causing intolerable physical or psychological suffering”. The guarantee and evaluation committee informed the patient on 21st September that her request had been accepted.
Lebender wanted this newspaper to tell her story, her motives for ending her life in this way and, above all, to make it clear that what she was going to do was not suicide, but a basic human right: to die with dignity and without suffering.
“I have already suffered so much, I want to leave. It’s not that I don’t want to live, I like living, it’s just that I can’t take this body any more”, she explained weeks before to this newspaper. Lebender wanted this newspaper to tell her story, her motives for ending her life in this way and, above all, to make it clear that what she was going to do was not, she insisted time and again, suicide, but a basic human right: to die with dignity and without suffering. Diario de Ibiza accompanied her from mid-September until her last day and moment: “My story must be published because many people do not understand euthanasia, they do not accept it. I want to bear witness. I want to help those who have doubts about whether it is good or not to choose to die in this way. First of all, it is a difficult decision. It’s one thing to talk about it, it’s another to live it. For her, the enactment of the law was “like a birthday present”. At last she could “go away” and “leave” her “heavy body”, which no longer listened to her.
Lebender chose her day to die, although she preferred to use other words, such as leave or travel: the “great journey”, as she called it, had to be on 27th October, because it included a seven and because it was Wednesday. Her favourite number and her favourite day.
For the full article, please visit Diario de Ibiza website here.