This week the world was shocked by the tragic story of 25-year-old Noelia Castillo.
On Thursday, an alleged gang-rape victim ended her short life with the help of the Spanish government, where assisted suicide has been legal since 2021.
Oh, how many systems have failed Castillo.
His death also ended a long-running legal battle waged by his father and the Spanish religious group Abogados Cristianos (Christian Lawyers), which tried to block his suicide after it was approved back in 2024.
In the end, the Spanish Supreme Court and the European Court of Human Rights upheld his request.
Castillo’s story is downright dystopian. This was not a woman sentenced to death for a dangerous diagnosis. Hers was a dirty and dark collection of mental illness, sexual abuse and a desperate suicide attempt that led to her being eligible for death.
But his sad father objected on the grounds that all that prevented him from having a clear mind to make such a difficult decision.
When he was 21 years old and following allegations of rape by three young men, Castillo tried to kill himself by jumping from the roof of a five-story building. He survived but was left paralyzed from the waist down. After that, he was confined to a wheelchair and suffering from chronic pain.
She said she had also been sexually assaulted twice before, including by her long-term boyfriend.
“I want to leave now and stop suffering, period.” No one in my family supports euthanasia. he said in an interview with the Spanish TV program “Y Ahora Sonsoles.”
Castillo described a hopeless hell on earth, saying he didn’t “feel like doing anything: not going out, not eating.”
The most worrying thing is that he envisioned his funeral the way many young women do their weddings.
“I told them how I want it to be. I want to die looking good. I have always thought that I want to die looking good,” he said about his wish to die. “I’ll put on my best dress and put on my makeup; it’ll be a simple thing.”
The tragedy of the Castillo family – and it is a family tragedy – will seem far-fetched to most of us. It happened in a land at sea far away.
However, just to the north of us, Canada has enthusiastically turned the disease of genocide into a national industry. June will mark 10 years since their MAID (Medical Assistance in Dying) law was passed, and it is estimated that more than 100,000 people will have used it to die by the time the law is a decade old.
A horrible and disgusting milestone.
Ten states, plus the District of Columbia, allow “medical aid in dying,” and similar legislation is coming to the Empire State.
Last month, Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a law allowing the suicide of terminally ill New Yorkers who have less than six months to live. It is scheduled to go into effect in June.
“My mother died of ALS, and I’m very familiar with the pain of seeing someone you love suffer and not having the power to stop it,” Hochul said at the time, adding that the bill “will allow New Yorkers to suffer less — shortening their lives, but their deaths.”
Among the state’s checkpoints there is a five-day waiting period between the writing and filing of the death warrant; video or audio of the patient’s request; and allowing “faith-based home hospice providers to opt out.
How long will we have a mass of corpses like in Canada, where 26-year-old Kiano Vafaeian died in December of 2025? Did he have terminal brain cancer? No he was suffering from diabetes, eye problems and seasonal depression.
His family rightly opposed his risky decision.
“We never thought that there would be a chance that any doctor would authorize a child who was 22 or 23 at that time to receive MAID because of diabetes or blindness,” said his mother, Margaret Marsilla.
But neglecting such a life is a slippery slope, and these laws open the door to terrible cases like those of Castillo and Vafeaian.
The state must fix potholes, keep citizens safe, protect order and maintain infrastructure.
It should not be in the business of mercy killing.
