Italian clinic prepared to help coma woman die

AN Italian clinic said yesterday it would take in a woman who has been in a coma for 17 years whose family is seeking to have her life ended, as the Roman Catholic Church kept up pressure to keep her alive.

The clinic in the northeastern Udine region said it would allow Eluana Englaro to spend her last days there, following a request from her family.

A court in Milan, near where Englaro is hospitalised, ruled on November 13 that her life support could be withdrawn, but the local authorities barred hospitals under their control from carrying out the decision.

The governor of Piedmont, Mercedes Bresso, a member of the centre-left Democrat Party, said her region, west of Milan, was ready to help enforce the court ruling because of “the lengthy legal battle followed by the disrespect of the father’s rights”.

Several other regions in predominantly Catholic Italy had offered to accommodate Englaro during her final days, but changed their minds, apparently under pressure from Health Minister Maurizio Sacconi.

Sacconi warned state-subsidised hospitals last month of “unimaginable consequences” if they were to suspend Englaro’s nutrition. Italy’s Roman Catholic Church has come out strongly against any form of mercy killing and warned against stopping artificially feeding the 37-year-old woman.

The archbishop of Turin, capital of Piedmont, Severino Poletto, told yesterday’s La Repubblica daily the Church’s view that stopping the young woman’s nutrition would be “an act of euthanasia”, and “against the law of God”.

Piedmont leader Bresso hit back, saying on Radio 24: “We are not living in a republic of ayatollahs where religion overrules law.” But she agreed that conscientious objection, allowed by legislation authorising abortion, should also be respected in this case if a doctor invoked it.

Englaro fell into a coma after a car accident and her father has been seeking an end to her life-support since 1999. The court said Englaro, when fully conscious, had stated her preference to die rather than being kept alive artificially.