It is “appropriate that Italy adopt the obligation to offer all citizens palliative care pathways” with “the burden of finding funds and financing. A good law on palliative care already exists in Italy” but “those who propose themselves as defenders of life must also find the money to implement it. Less weapons and more palliative care.”
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This is stated to Avvenire by Mons. Renzo Pegoraro, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, after the Veneto law. “There is no right to assisted suicide” but “the obligation on the State to take care, and also to respect the individual’s will not to receive treatments.”
The law in Veneto
Veneto was the first region governed by the center-right to define the timing and procedures for medically assisted suicide. In the new Veneto law, the perimeter of what was established by the Constitutional Court with a 2019 ruling is obviously maintained, and it is the necessary premise: the national requirements to obtain a positive response to medically assisted suicide remain firm, and therefore access is allowed to people suffering from irreversible diseases, who depend on vital health treatments, who experience physical or psychological suffering deemed intolerable, and who are fully capable of understanding and willing, thus able to make conscious and free decisions about their own body. Only the patient can request access to end-of-life care.
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The patient therefore continues to request access to medically assisted suicide from the Ulss (Local Health and Social Care Unit of residence). The analysis of the requirements (those of the ruling) is the responsibility of multidisciplinary medical commissions, one for each health company, to be established within thirty days of the law’s entry into force. Its members are identified by the Ulss on a voluntary basis among its employees.
The Veneto law establishes that each commission includes a doctor, a neurologist, a psychologist, a psychiatrist, a forensic doctor, a nurse, a palliative care specialist, and a bioethicist. The palliative care doctor has a central role: their opinion is not binding within the multidisciplinary commission, but it is “strengthened.” This means that if the commission, by collegial opinion, disagrees with it, it must present a detailed motivation to proceed. From the Usl commission, the decision passes to the ethics committee, which evaluates the patient’s choice and gives a final opinion. Veneto also adds a regional bioethics committee, whose appointment is the responsibility of the regional council, which will express guidelines and a non-binding opinion to be presented to the ethics committee.
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