Assisted suicide, a second person in Italy can access

“Antonio”, a quadriplegic patient from the Marche region since 2014, will be the second Italian to have legal access to assisted suicide in Italy. The first was Federico Carboni, the 44-year-old quadriplegic patient from Senigallia who for months was known by the name of Mario and who took a lethal drug that put an end to his suffering on June 16.

“Antonio”, assisted by the legal board of the Luca Coscioni Association, managed to assert his right to access medically assisted suicide after two years of waiting and legal actions. In Italy, the legal procedure for accessing assisted suicide is quite complex and the right is recognized only if the four conditions indicated by the Constitutional Court in the so-called Cappato / Antoniani judgment of 2017 are met. Specifically, the conditions are set out in the Court’s judgment with the following wording: “About suicideautonomously and freely formed, of a person kept alive by life-sustaining treatments and suffering from one irreversible pathologysource physical or psychological suffering which she deems intolerable, but fully capable of making free and informed decisionsprovided that these conditions and the methods of execution have been verified by a public structure of the national health service, subject to the opinion of the territorially competent ethics committee“.

Now, after the Commission of experts of the Marche Region Health Authority has sent the missing opinion on the drug and on the method of administration, the legal practice can be considered successfully concluded. The opinion, expressed as a whole, confirms the suitability of the drug Thiopentone sodium to complete the act and recognizes to “Antonio” the possibility of self-administer the drug when he wants to.

“Now “Antonio” is finally free to choose if and when to proceed – declared Filomena Gallo, lawyer of “Antonio” and secretary of the Luca Coscioni Association -. But it took almost two years so that his right was respected. A very long time for people who are in conditions of extreme suffering and who, unfortunately, many sick people do not have“. “I was about to reconnect with the Swiss structure I had contacted before this path – said “Antonio” – but today, at the news of the confirmation of the drug and the modalities that I will be able to follow, I am happy to have close my loved ones here with me, in my house until the last moment. I now begin to prepare everything in order to proceed quickly with assisted suicide“.