Italian premier expresses ‘doubts’ over assisted suicide

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ROME, Sept 29, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Italy’s Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has
expressed reservations about a recent court decision decriminalising assisted
suicide, in comments to the Corriere della Sera newspaper published Saturday.

Conte said that as a lawyer by training and a Catholic, while he had no
doubt about the right to life, he was not so sure about the right to die.

He was speaking to the newspaper after the constitutional court ruled on
Wednesday that assisted suicide could be lawful, despite a law forbidding it
in Italy.

“To choose to be taken towards death and to ask help from personnel for
that, who must be specialised — there some doubt is permitted,” said Conte.

“And if one did get to that, one would have to at least recognise a
conscientious objection for anyone who did not feel capable (of taking
part),” he added.

Wednesday’s court ruling stressed that assisted suicide could only concern
patients with incurable conditions who were being kept alive artificially and
whose physical and psychological suffering was judged to be unbearable.

The patients concerned would also have to be fully capable of taking such
a decision freely and consciously, the court added.

The court also made it clear that its decision had been taken in the
expectation that parliament would make the relevant changes to existing law.

Italy, which has a strong Catholic tradition, currently forbids
euthanasia, and has laws punishing instigating or assisting suicide with up
to 12 years in prison.

A number of European countries have laws permitting assisted suicide under
strictly regulated conditions, but contentious cases still come before the
courts.

Earlier this month in the Netherlands, the first country to legalise
euthanasia, a court acquitted a doctor over the euthanasia of a woman with
severe dementia.

The case attracted media attention due to details of how the unnamed
patient was given a sedative in her coffee but nevertheless had to be
restrained by her family as the now-retired doctor injected the euthanasia
drug.