End of life, everything that does not return and damages the patient in the text approved by the government

After years of waiting and judgments of the Constitutional Court, the majority approved in the Senate’s Justice and Health Committee Commission a text which, saying the promoters, finally regulates the medical help to voluntary death. But to read the text well, it is quite clear, as many are emphasizing that it is a step back. More than a clear discipline, the measure narrows access, raises new obstacles and risks leaving the most serious patients in a gray area made of solitude, uncertainty and pain. “It is an unconstitutional and cruel law,” he denounced the Luca Coscioni Association, In a press conference convened ad hoc to illustrate the text approved by the government. «It does not guarantee a right, denies it. He does not protect people, abandon them ».

In particular, Filomena Gallolawyer and national secretary of the Association, he explains: “The text of the majority provides that the articles of the biological testament law are no longer applicable and presents evident profiles of unconstitutionality already in its initial system because it aims to cancel rights recognized by the system and reiterated by the Constitutional Court, according to which life is a fundamental good, but it is not and cannot be a duty if a person, in conditions of full capacity, consciously chooses to end up intolerable “.

The law states in the opening the principle “of the unavailability of the right to life”, effectively canceling what is established by Judgment 242/2019 of the Constitutional Courtwho had recognized the possibility of not punishing those who help to die a person in very serious conditions, as long as he is lucid, aware, and subjected to vital support treatments. But here comes a second knot: the new text narrows further The interpretation of “vital support”, excluding all the sick not connected to machinery. In practice, says the Luca Coscioni association, Most of the patients now deemed admissible would be excludedand could no longer access the procedure without risking criminal consequences for themselves or for those who help them.

Furthermore, the modification of article 580 of the criminal code: the help to suicide will no longer be punished in the presence of rigorous clinical conditions, ascertained by a National Evaluation Committeeappointed by the government and composed of experts. But precisely this mechanism, according to the Coscioni Association, is the obstacle. “The National Committee of evaluation of government appointment would exclude the National Health Service from the procedures for verifying the requirements and by assistance”, added the lawyer Filomena Gallo. «It is no longer the patient, with his doctor and in compliance with the criteria set by the court, to decide. It is an organism appointed from above ».

Palliative treatments become mandatory as a condition of access. “Thus these treatments are transformed into a mandatory health treatment,” continues Gallo. «Waiting times are introduced incompatible with the conditions of those who suffer, not even respecting law 219/17 on the advance provisions of treatment. The Constitutional Court asked Parliament a law that regulates medical help at voluntary death, Respecting and applying the judgments of the Court, which have law value and which cannot be ignored by the legislator. We need a law that respects the freedom and rights of people, not that it denies them “.

While in Parliament we try to restrict, the mobilization continues outside. With the campaign Free immediately, The Luca Coscioni Association promotes a proposal for a law of popular initiative to fully legalize euthanasia and report the right to the center of the scene. Finally on 8 July the Constitutional Court will still be pronounced, this time on a new case of help to suicide. As Filomena Gallo pointed out: “The Constitutional Court will discuss for the first time of the inconstitutionality of article 579 of the criminal code expressing itself for the first on the theme of active euthanasia”.