Posted on 11/14/2008 6:12:31 AM PST by NYer
Rome, Italy (LifeNews.com) -- The highest court in Italy has granted the right to a disabled woman's father to kill her via euthanasia by removing her feeding tube. Eluana Englaro has been in what doctors term a so-called vegetative state following a car accident and has received food and water via a feeding tube.
Englaro has been the subject of the latest battle similar to the one Terri Schiavo's family waged to prevent her former husband from denying her food and water.
She will now be starved and dehydrated to death in the same painful manner that took Schiavo's life over the course of 13 days four years ago.
The Court of Cassation rejected an appeal by prosecutors of a lower court ruling from July that allowed Beppino Englaro to kill his daughter. Beppino claimed Eluana had told him shortly before her accident that she had visited a comatose friend and said she didn't want to be in the same condition.
Under Italian law, killing a patient via direct euthanasia with an overdose of drugs is illegal and patients have a right to refuse treatment, but the law doesn't address cases like Englaro's when the patient is unable to make their own medical decisions.
Responding to the ruling, Beppino told the ANSA news agency that the decision "confirms that we live under the rule of law" and he said he is happy the decade-long legal battle has come to a close.
Conservative lawmakers, pro-life groups and the Catholic Church all opposed allowing the euthanasia death and condemned the ruling.
Enrico La Loggia, a legislator in Premier Silvio Berlusconi's party, called the decision a "death sentence" and the Vatican's top health official, Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, told the Apcom news outlet that the decision is "killing a person."
The state attorneys had asked Italy's top court to issue a temporary injunction preventing Beppino Englaro, Eluana's father, from killing his daughter before the case can be heard.
Earlier this year, some of Italy's leading neurologists said Englaro should not be killed and they question whether she is in a persistent vegetative state.
"She is not a person in coma, or a terminal patient, but a severely handicapped person in need of special basic care, as occurs in many other situations of serious injuries to parts of the brain that limit the capacity of communication and self-sustenance," they said, according to a Zenit report.
"A patient's nutrition and hydration, even if assisted, cannot be confused with medical treatment; they have always constituted the fundamental elements of care, precisely because they are indispensable for every human being, whether healthy or sick," they went on to say.
"The tube through which nourishment is received does not alter this elementary truth; rather, it can be compared to a prosthesis or any other type of aid," they explained.
Eluana has been in a hospital in the northern Italian town of Lecco since the accident.
Ping!
I’m shocked that Italy would allow this.
What a messed up world we live in where people go to prison (rightfully so) for starving their pets, yet courts order parents to starve their children.
We are all at risk.
The slide down the slippery slope towards a FAR more EVIL world continues...
When food/water is withdrawn they never starve, people can go very long without food. They dehydrate to death. Medival torture. Extremely painful. Why the police don’t get involved in these cases is beyond me, even if the procedure is “lawful” how can law enforcement stand there and let it happen?
The Court of Cassation?.......The Court of Cessation, more like it......
Prayers for Eluana and her father.
Wouldn’t it be more “humane” for dad to just take a gun and shoot his daughter in the head instead of slow starvation? What’s the difference once a society decides who should live and who should die. Sheesh, they give convicted felons on death row a more humane execution then this girl.
This world has gone quite mad. Lord Jesus, come.
The monsters are on the march, our Lord instructs us to STAND against evil, not wimp out, we are to put on the armor of God and STAND, and after all else, then to STAND.
Gov’t has established itself as God therefore the Christian citizen does not owe allegiance to it
QUICKLY!
When "we" allowed the government sanctioned murder of an innocent woman, I'm sure many around the world said; "I'm shocked that AMERICA would allow this."
It’s not as simple as courts ordering parents to starve their children.
It’s much more sinister. The father went to court to get permission to starve his daughter. The court agreed with it.
It’s conspiracy to commit murder, plain and simple.
I have 3 daughters, and God forbid anything approaching this tragedy ever happens, but I know I would NOT ask anyone to ‘stop feeding and hydrating’ my daughters. I would be there ensuring their care, and making sure they WERE fed and had water. And anything else I could provide.
This action is so wrong-headed.
But I’m praying that somehow, when they remove the feeding tube, she awakens . . . and gives glory where it’s due.
If courts are so quick to assign the right to kill, why don’t they just assign the duties for care to whomever it is that wants to keep this person alive?
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