Italian Parliament Reopens the Debate on Euthanasia, Bowing to Celebrity Pressure

Left blind and quadriplegic after a traffic accident in 2014, Fabiano Antoniani, known as DJ Fabo, begged the authorities, in many videos that circulated through the social networks, to allow him to die “without suffering” in Italy. On January 19, in a letter to the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, he had presented his situation in writing: 
 

I am not depressed. But I no longer see and I can no longer move. For more than two years I have been confined to my bed, sunk in an endless night. I would like to be able to choose death without suffering.

Since Italian law did not permit it, the musician finally asked Marco Cappato, a leader of the Radical Party and of an association for “the right to death with dignity” (sic) to bring him to Switzerland on February 27, 2017, to Pfäffikon, a little town on the shores of Lake Zurich.

This highly publicized death stirred up a wave of emotions on the other side of the Alps, which led the Italian parliamentarians to put on the agenda for March 13, 2017, the text of a bill revised and corrected by the members of the parliamentary Social Affairs Committee. In this version, euthanasia is not explicitly legalized. But, as Marianne emphasized on March 6, 2017, “[I]f you read carefully between the lines, the concept of ‘the right to let die', as in France for example, is indeed worked into the text.” Thus this document foresees the possibility that the patient might ask that basic care such as artificial feeding and hydration be discontinued. It also confers on the person receiving medical care the right to refuse to undergo specific medical examination and to follow the treatments prescribed by a physician. On the other hand, the patient will not be able to demand a prescription for treatments that are against the law and medical ethics. For his part, the physician will be obliged to follow the instructions of his patient and will no longer be liable to prosecution for failing to help a person in danger. In the case of physical or psychological incapacity, the patient will be represented by a “trusted person” whose name has been noted in his “biological testament” (“living will” or “healthcare planning document”).

In response to this draft legislation, L’Osservatore Romano published in its Italian edition dated March 15-16, 2017, a column by an Italian physician who is an expert in palliative care, Ferdinando Cancelli. He denounces the fact that the wording “at no time explicitly rules out practices such as euthanasia or assisted suicide",which “reinforces the fear of a drift in that direction". Moreover, the physician notes that, unlike in Great Britain, the law being discussed in Italy does not provide for the right to conscientious objection of the physician, who finds himself bound by the will of the patient or of the “trusted person".

According to the estimates of groups calling for the legalization of assisted suicide in Italy, which were cited by cath.ch on March 16, 2017, at least 150 Italians chose in 2016 to go to Switzerland to die voluntarily.

(Sources: cath.ch / osservatore romano / lemonde / marianne / 24heures – DICI no. 352 dated March 31, 2017)