FaithWorld

UPDATE: Eluana Englaro died on Monday Feb. 9.

What’s been called “Italy’s Terry Schiavo case” is starting to resemble its U.S. precedent in more ways than one. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi ordered doctors on Friday not to disconnect the feeding tubes that the country’s top appeals court had ruled could be removed. Doctors had began withdrawing them on Friday before the order came from Rome.

Eluana Englaro, 38, has been in a vegetative state since a car crash in 1992. Her  case has looked much like that of Schiavo, the American who spent 15 years in a vegetative state and was allowed to die in 2005 after a long court battle. (Photo:Eluana Englaro in an undated family photo)

“Until we have a law about end-of-life issues, nutrition and hydration, because they are a form of vital life sustenance, cannot be suspended under any circumstances by those who are care-givers of people who are not self-sufficient,” Berlusconi said after making the case resemble the Schiavo drama even more by intervening to stop Englaro’s tubes from being removed. In the Schiavo case, President George Bush also stepped in at a late stage to try to block a court decision to disconnect her.

The cabinet acted in defiance of Italy’s President Giorgio Napolitano, who was opposed to dealing with the issue through a decree and has the power to block it. But Berlusconi said that if that happened he would call an emergency session of parliament, where he has a comfortable majority, to enact a law.

Catholic politicians, mostly in the centre right, have said that not feeding Englaro amounts to euthanasia, which is illegal in Italy, and had urged the government to intervene.

Italy’s “Terry Schiavo case” has ended with the country’s top appeals court allowing a father to disconnect the feeding tube that has kept his comatose daughter alive for 16 years. Eluana Englaro, now 37, has been in a vegetative state at a hospital in northern Italy since a 1992 car crash. The Englaro case has been compared to that of American Terri Schiavo, who spent 15 years in a vegetative state before a long and very public dispute ended in 2005 with a court decision allowing her husband to have her feeding tube disconnected.

As in the Schiavo case, the Milan court that ruled on the case said it was convinced Englaro would prefer to die rather than be kept alive artificially. State prosecutors appealed that decision to the Cassation Court, the highest appeals court in Italy, and it was the Cassation Court’s decision on Nov. 13 that definitively settled the case. (Photo:Eluana Englaro in an undated family photo)

This was the first time such a ruling has been made and upheld in Italy, where the influential Roman Catholic Church is implacably opposed to ending feeding and hydrating of patients in a vegetative state. Vatican Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan called the decision a “monstrous and inhuman murder” .