Euthanasia, which literally means “good death”, can be defined as the deliberate act of ending life. The procedure is legal only in seven countries in the world and is characterized by being free, voluntary and performed under the supervision of a medical team.
Although it is a somewhat controversial act, the truth is that the debates around the subject are increasingly requested because the cases where the quality of life is extremely low exist and must be heard.
Such is the case of Shanti De Corte, a 23-year-old Belgian woman who, after surviving the jihadist terrorist attacks at the airport in Brussels, Belgium, in 2016, decided that she could not continue living with the mental ravages caused by said attack, which led her to request euthanasia in April 2022.
Shanti was only 17 years old when she witnessed the March 22 attack along with 90 other students from the Santa Rita de Kontich School. The group was on its way to Rome for a study tour when there were three explosions at the airfields, carried out by followers of the self-proclaimed Islamic State, leaving 35 dead and 340 injured.
Although the young woman survived the attack, she was never able to recover from the trauma, so she tried to take her own life on several occasions. In addition, she was in and out of psychiatric hospitals, as the anxiety and depression attacks were unbearable. In these centers she took 11 daily antidepressants and when she seemed to be improving, she was the victim of a sexual assault in the health center, which worsened her condition.
Because euthanasia has been legal in Belgium since 2002, the Federal Commission for the Control and Evaluation of Euthanasia was able to review Shanti’s case and make the decision to accept her request, since the doctors considered her mental problems “incurable”.
The procedure was carried out on May 7, 2022, although his relatives just communicated the news. Shanti De Corte said goodbye to her through her Facebook account with the following message:
I laughed and cried. Until the last day. I loved and was allowed to feel what true love was. Now I will go in peace.