Daylife/Reuters PicturesItaly’s Supreme Court provoked the fury of conservatives yesterday by ruling that a father can disconnect the feeding tube that has kept his daughter alive in a coma for nearly 17 years.
In one of the most painfully emotive cases this Catholic country has confronted for years, the court overturned the earlier rejection by an appeal court of the father’s right to end his daughter’s life. The ruling was denounced by conservatives as the legalisation of euthanasia in Italy, but by the father, Beppino Englaro, as “a way out of hell”.
Eluana Englaro was still a teenager in 1992 when she was injured in a car crash which put her into a “persistent vegetative state”, from which she has shown no signs of emerging in the subsequent 16 years. Her father has been fighting for nearly 10 years for the right to remove the feeding tubes that keep her alive in her hospital room in the northern Italian town of Lecco. In a first reaction to the court’s ruling last night, he said: “We live in a state of rights. At last there is a way out of this hell.”
The Supreme Court endorsed the original ruling by a court in Milan in July which accepted that Ms Englaro’s coma was irreversible, and that before the car crash she had stated her preference to die rather than be kept alive artificially.
Apart from the courts, does her family have the right to make this decision?
Of course.
YES THEY DO ESPECIALLY AFTER 17 YEARS!
does her family have the right to make this decision?
Who else do you think should make it?
I think any lawyer can draw up a living will. If you have that done, you can do what you wish. Otherwise, others will make the decision for you.
Yes!
Religious fundies, I hate them like I hate the Eco fundies.
Sheesh. You’d think that after the Terry Schiavo debacle, people would have learned their lesson.
At least they weren’t plagued with buttinskis like Bill Frist dialing in with his diagnosis-by-videotape.
This is such difficult territory.
I’m just glad I don’t have to make that decision for anyone I love. To give up hope and grant your own daughter the right to die is probably the most difficult thing any father in the world can ever do.
A friend of mine works in a hospice and sees people die every week. She has a very healthy relation to death, and she does support this. I do too, from a logical standpoint, but emotionally, this must be hell.
pj
There are a lot of poor and homeless who would like a bit of life support.
This “PVS” medical definition is a recent invention inserted in between “brain-damaged” and “coma” that is very subjective and can potentially be abused. In fact it seems to frequently be used to justify terminating people who are not in fact in a coma.
The media tends to conflate the two, and the word ‘vegetative’ is misleading, because the condition actually indicates more brain activity than a coma. This is intentional IMO.
Either she’s brain dead/in a coma or she’s not.
At least in this case the parents are the decision-makers instead of the ex-husband in the Schiavo case whose motives were conflicted.
#4, Ben,
You don’t need a lawyer to write out a living will.
Write out your wishes. Make several copies. Sign and date all of them and have some friends sign and date also. Give a copy to your partner or who would otherwise have the final say if something happened.
Don’t forget, if your situation changes you will need to review and possibly change your living will. You might also revisit it every couple of years or so just to be assured that it is still there and whomever will exercise the will remains aware of your wishes.
Give a copy to your primary physician so he is aware.
For more information, try here.
To avoid messy circumstances for others though, put your wishes down in writing !!! Today !!!
#11 – B-Bob
>>At least in this case the parents are the
>>decision-makers instead of the ex-husband in
>>the Schiavo case whose motives were conflicted.
Michael Schiavo wasn’t her ex-husband, he was her husband. Who better than him to make the decision? After all, we know what God wants: “..man will leave his father and mother and be united with his wife, and the two will become one flesh” (Matthew 19:5).
Better you had said “At least in this case, they didn’t have lame-o politicians like Jeb Bush, Bill Frist, Tom DeLay, and Rick Santorum ( http://spreadingsantorum.com/ ), and the US Senate poking their noses into people’s private business”.
#13
You’re right–thank you for jostling my memory of the case–he had already started a family with another woman but refused to divorce Terry so that he could see her termination through. Kept asking nurses ‘when is that bitch gonna die?’ Then there are the curious circumstances of her original injury…
Anyway my point is that this Italian case doesn’t appear to contain any of the fishy nuances of the Schiavo case.
Apart from the courts, does her family have the right to make this decision?
Your point of view is a clear demonstration of the division between the left and the right.
From my point of view, if a court can make the decision, of course a family can make the same. The family isn’t seeking a criminal charge, and it doesn’t look like they’re seeking civil damages. They’re simply looking for the law to be enforced.
When we reach a point where there is a negative consequence for judges who fail to uphold the law, we will have progressed as a society.
Absolutely yes.
#14 – Billy Bob
>>Kept asking nurses ‘when is that bitch
>>gonna die?’
Uh, no he didn’t. The Schindlers (Terry Schiavo’s parents”) ALLEGED that he said it, as part of thier suit to wrest control of Michael Schiavo’s wife’s care away from him. They also claimed he beat her, tried to medicate her inappropriately, and tried to starve her.
A thoughough investigatio by the Florida Department of Children and Families found all the charges to be bullshit, and declared that “”No information or evidence was found to support the allegations,” and said its investigation “found Michael Schiavo to be a loving spouse who cared deeply about his wife”.
The parents kept making allegations over the 15 years that Terry Schiavo was in a PVS, and they were always dismissed. Then they found heroes in Jeb Bush, Rick Santorum ( http://spreadingsantorum.com/ ), Bill Frist, and Tom DeLay, who were willing to interfere in a family’s privater matter to further their own extreme religious beliefs.
An investigation by the
“…does her family have the right to make this decision?”
If not her family, who? Bill Frist? God? Does Frist know the difference?
Frist embarrassed himself personally and professionally by claiming Schiavo had some possibility of recovery based on a video tape he’d seen. I think this action also cost him, and his party, politically.
“Apart from the courts, does her family have the right to make this decision?”
The family didn’t make the decision, the girl made it before her accident. “…before the car crash she had stated her preference to die rather than be kept alive artificially.”
A better question would be, “Does anyone NOT a family member have any business sticking their nose into matters such as this?”
I’m all for removing life support from James Heel.
#21, TML,
Amen to that brother !!! And a big hallelujah !!! And a Zippidy Doo Dah, Zippidy Yay !!! And don’t forget the RIGHT ON MAN !!!
Sad, anyway you look at it, everyone looses. At least now after the ruling her suffering will end and the family will have closure.
by time lifes end. no one will seriously ask if this dimension even has the right to do so. this italian girl died 17 years ago and they still keep the body warm, you never know, maybe she will be one of those, rising from the dead.
now, the for most of us uncomprehensable part is, the parents, did not fully loose their daughter 17 years ago, medics and hospitals made it possible for them to still loose her every single day since the car crash. now you decide what is easier on oneself. loosing a loved one and keeping her in memory, loving her, living on your life. or loosing a loved one, loving her, living your life in hopes involving a breathing dead, rather than memories,
Well apparently Bush-Cheney have had the right to sentence americans’ sons and daughter to death at age 17 or later. AKA the Iraq war. But try to end the pointless non-existence of someone who’s braindead. And you get a bunch of yahoo seeking reelection on some morals issue, pretending that they actually care about one way or the other about the victim.
BTW, I’ve noticed that this new Tv show “Life on Mars” has taken the position that a coma victim could be leading another life in the past. So it’s in effect anti- “pull the plug” of coma patients. At least until ABC Tv executives pull the plug on the show.
A situation like that is none of the government’s (ANY government) business. The hard part is figuring out how to close the door we as a whole have inadvertently opened for the governments to meddle in people’s private lives. When you start deciding how other people should live their lives you open the door for others to do the same to you. People just don’t seem to get it that individual freedom requires looking out for the freedom of others.
It can sometimes become demanding to separate the valuable history of the roman catholic church notes from the poor.