BITTER POLEMICS raged in Italy on the day after the death of Eluana Englaro, the comatose 37-year-old woman who was “allowed to die” in a clinic in Udine on Monday night.
While those who supported the Englaro family’s decision to “pull the plug” spoke of Eluana having finally found “peace”, those opposed called it a “murder”.
Furthermore, the issue continues to generate tension between Italian president Giorgio Napolitano and prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.
Speaking to Milan daily Corriere della Sera, the prime minister accused the president of having made "a grave mistake" in refusing to sign a government decree last Friday that would have obliged Ms Englaro's medical team to resume feeding her.
In line with a supreme court ruling of last November, doctors last Friday disconnected Ms Englaro’s feeding tubes. She has been in a coma since being gravely brain-damaged in a 1992 car accident.
Speaking to daily Libero, the prime minister further criticised the decision, saying: "Eluana did not die a natural death. She was killed."
The prime minister’s words were partly echoed by Senator Maurizio Gasparri, a member of Mr Berlusconi’s House of Freedom coalition, who said that “certain signatures and certain non-signatures” weighed heavily on the death of Ms Englaro, clearly implying that if President Napolitano had immediately signed the government’s decree last Friday, then she might still be alive.
Partly in response to these polemics, President Napolitano said yesterday that this “moment of pain and distress” should become the occasion for a “serious and informed common reflection” on the whole right-to-die issue. Throughout a 10-year legal battle, Beppino Englaro, the father of Eluana, had always argued that, before her 1992 accident, she had said that she would not want to continue living in such circumstances.
The Italian Bishops Conference, echoing sustained Vatican criticism of the Englaro family’s decision, issued a harsh criticism, saying: “Eluana did not die on her own; rather she was killed by those who deprived her of food and water. Hers was certainly not a natural death.”
Supporters of the Englaro family, however, pointed to the testimony of the one journalist, Marinello Chirico of state broadcaster RAI, who was allowed to see Ms Englaro in her last days.
Chirico said Eluana was completely unrecognisable from the girl whose pre-accident photos have been widely printed in the Italian media in recent years.
She painted a heart-rending picture of a completely immobile, inert patient who had to be physically moved in her bed every two hours.
The Eluana case is destined to rumble on for some time yet. While a Bill legislating for “end-of-life” situations, modelled on Mr Berlusconi’s decree, is now going through parliament, much attention will be focused on the findings of an autopsy on Ms Englaro, announced yesterday.
Her medical team stated that she died of a heart attack, but some observers expressed the suspicion that her death, which came sooner than expected, might have been accelerated.