Rome, Italy, Jul 10, 2008 / 10:36 am
The Civil Court of Appeals in Milan ruled this week that the father of Eluana Englaro, an Italian woman who has been in a vegetative state for 16 years after a car accident in 1992, can discontinue the food and hydration that is keeping her alive, which would condemn her to the same agonizing death suffered by the American Terri Schiavo.
The 37 year-old Eluana is from the town of Lecco. Her father, Beppino Englaro, has been fighting the courts for 10 years to remove her feeding tubes, arguing that this would have been his daughter’s wish.
The court has ruled Eluana’s condition is “irreversible” and that she may be denied food and hydration. Her father has the option of asking doctors to pull her feeding tubes immediately or to wait until the 60-day period for the state to appeal the ruling has expired.
Grave decision
Adriano Pessina, Director of the Atheneum Center of Bioethics at the Catholic University of Milan, called the ruling a “grave decision” that ignores the principle that human life is not disposable as well as the duty of civil society to not legitimize the denial of therapeutic treatment to citizens who are not able to care for themselves.