Please kill me slowly and painfully so I will suffer more than almost any other living thing meeting the end. Please dehydrate me to death slowly, Dad...
Yeah sure, that is what she wanted...
Last Wednesday the civil appeals court in Italy Milan authorized stopping the forced hydration and feeding that has kept Eluana Englaro alive for the past 16 years. The Italian woman has been in a coma since her car accident on January 18, 1992. Her father Beppino Englaro, spoke to Corriere Canadese/Tandem about his reaction to the ruling.
What did you feel when you learned about the court ruling?
“I simply felt a great relief because finally the will of my daughter will be respected.”
What were her dreams before the accident?............
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But I want to focus here on an issue to which O’Malley’s remembrance gracefully refers, an issue which seems to me to come into sharper focus as we think about and honor Dona’s life. Yes, she was a great role model, especially for those of us in the disability community who continue to struggle for our rights. O’Malley writes: “People who lack Dona’s experience (that’s most of us, after all, thank goodness) are prone to make knowing comments about the importance of ‘quality of life’ for physically challenged people. What such comments often miss is that your quality of life can and should be whatever you make of it.” I recall an editorial by O’Malley, in the wake of Terri Schiavo’s horrific death in March 2005, in which O’Malley, virtually alone among progressive commentators, took the brave position obliquely reiterated here. “There’s a clear implication,” O’Malley wrote then, “in some of these discussions [of proposed “death with dignity” bills] that the life of a disabled person is somehow lacking in dignity, no matter how much bill sponsors choose to deny it.” ......
Following in Dona’s Tire Tracks
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