8mm
Posted on 07/09/2008 4:18:28 PM PDT by wagglebee
Rome, Italy (LifeNews.com) -- In a case that hearkens back to the international debate over the life and death of Terri Schiavo, a father in Italy has received permission from a court to take his daughter's life. Eluana Englaro has been in what doctors term a vegetative state for 16 years and has received food and water through a feeding tube.
Beppino Englaro, Eluana's father, has been seeking the right to remove the feeding tube and starve and dehydrate Eluana to death in the same way as Schiavo.
Schiavo's husband won that right after a years-long legal battle that made its way to the Supreme Court. Though she was able to interact with her parents and siblings, Schiavo died after a painful starvation death that covered nearly two weeks.
Eluana has been in a hospital in the northern Italian town of Lecco since 1992 when she was involved in an automobile accident.
According to a Reuters report, an appeals court in Milan claimed Eluana's comatose state is irreversible and also claimed that, prior to the accident, she made it clear should would rather die than live in an incapacitated state.
"I feel that I can now free the most splendid creature I have ever known," Beppino Englaro told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica. "She simply wanted to be left to die, (she wanted) nature to take its course."
He says he wants to release his daughter from "the inhuman and degrading condition" in which she has been "forced to exist" for 15 years.
As a result of the court's decision, Beppino can now immediately ask doctors to remove Eluana's feeding tube or he could wait 60 days for state prosecutors to file an appeal, Reuters indicated.
This isn't the first time Englaro's case had been in court. In April 2005, the Italian Supreme Court confirmed a lower court ruling to keep her feeding tube in place.
Before that, a lower court rejected the argument because there was no specific evidence on Englaro's views of life and death.
In addition, the lower court's opinion stated that to remove the tube required, "valuations of life and death that are rooted in concepts of an ethical or religious nature, which are extrajudicial."
This is the fist national debate over euthanasia in Italy since the death of Piergiorgio Welby, a man who campaigned to change the law there because he wanted to kill himself as a result of his advanced muscular dystrophy.
Welby ultimately died in December 2006 after anesthesiologist Mario Riccio shut off the life support for him.
Riccio unplugged the machine that was helping Welby breathe. He then administered a lethal drug cocktail that killed the 60 year-old man.
At the time he killed Welby, Riccio denied his actions constituted an illegal euthanasia, which could net him between six and 15 years in prison if charged and convicted.
The Catholic Church refused to allow Welby's family to have a Catholic funeral.
Yet there is not a shred of evidence that this is what his daughter wants.
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Italy?
This was over a year ago, in the same country:
Girl Suffers Forced Abortion in Italy
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/feb/07021904.html
By Peter J. Smith
TURIN, Italy, February 19, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - An Italian judge ordered a 13 year-old girl to undergo an abortion, despite the girl’s pleas to let her keep her child reports the Italian news agency, La Stampa.
The girl, Valentina, had become pregnant by her 15 year-old boyfriend, however rather than let her choose to keep her child, her parents demanded she have an abortion on the grounds that she was ruining her life by becoming a mother.
“You cannot hold this child ... you must abort, and father will never have to know,” Valentina’s mother told her, saying that she did not have the money to support the child.
Despite Valentina’s repeated attempts to make her parents understand she wanted to choose to keep her baby, the case went to the Court of Minors. Judge Giuseppe Cocilovo then issued the ruling to abort Valentina’s child.
Under Italian law, a minor may not decide whether to keep or abort her child, and may be forced by her guardians or parents to undergo an abortion.
However, the abortion has meant nothing less than disaster for Valentina, who was confined to the psychiatric unit of Regina Margherita children’s hospital in Turin after the abortion for wanting to commit suicide.
“You have made me kill, and now I kill myself, I kill myself”, cried Valentina. “I do not want here to be,” Valentina repeated. “I am not crazy, I am only evil like a dog for what my parents and the judges have obliged to make to me.”
The case of Valentina is an egregious case of forced abortion in Italy, where one would expect that a woman‘s “right to choose” would mean the possibility of choosing life. However, the silence of purportedly “pro-choice” feminist groups has been deafening thus far over 13 year-old Valentina’s forced abortion, despite her very own choice that her body should carry life.
This decision is being by the very people who should be making it: her family.
Unless you have had to make this gut wrenching decision, as some of us have, you have no right to pass judgment here. Remember that it is only through the serendipity of modern medicine that feeding tubes are now possible. In any earlier age, this poor soul would have gone to meet her Maker 15 years ago.
In other words, I am really getting sick of keeping her up. It would just be easier for me if she were to die. Although I’m sure he loves his daughter, seriously, I believe he does. This is not a Michael Schiavo. But I think 15 years is a long long time. I don’t think I could do it and not feel burdoned. Allowing my child to dehydrate and starve to death... no, I couldn’t do that. No more than I could let them starve and dehydrate when they relied on my hands to feed them as babies.
I think we can all say “I wouldn’t want to live that way”, but when faced with death, most instinctively cling to life.
Ping
Feeding tubes were developed OVER 200 years ago. The problems were solved decades ago with modern plastics.
We are talking about food, water and plastic, NOT serendipity.
Terri screamed when they told her the feeding tube was coming out; this is not a myth, there were too many people (including several FReepers) outside the hospice who heard it.
Living in that condition for 15 years is of course a horrible thing, but her body has to be functioning to an extent or she would be on a respirator and wouldn’t be able to process the nutrients from the feeding tube. If she was on a respirator, I could understand him pulling the tube, but starving/dehydrating her to death isn’t right.
You are right. When expressing my opinion, I should have made it clear that I don’t think this man is wrong. I am sad he has to be in this situation.
Michael Schiavo is a whole different matter.
I followed your link and went to the article. At the end of it are listed 2 links to the story in Italian. The little girl, Valentina, was herself adopted. She told her mother that she was pregnant, to which the mother replied, “You can’t keep this child. You must have an abortion. Your father will never have to know.”
The psychiatrist doesn’t think she should be hospitalized but also doesn’t want her back with her parents. He wants her in a halfway house.
The story is so disgusting, I’m sorry I read it.
Oh Dear! I heard about her on a news article and googled her. Found her parents website and was horrified. I even called Jeb Bush’s office. That whole thing was just terrible. If her parents were willing to take care of her, why the heck not? I could see if she had it defined in writing, but just because her husband who had other kids and living with another woman says “Oh yeah, she told me she wouldn’t want to live that way”. Crazy. What scared me more was how much that judge got away with.
Solon used tubes 2000 years ago to “wire up” temples in Egypt.
That explains alot.
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In this particular case I’m willing to cut the father of this person a little more slack than I was willing to give to Mr. Schiavo.
I still think it’s repulsive to end a life like that, but as the parent of this person I would think that he would want what’s best for his child and that killing them is still a mortal sin.
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