Schiavo Revisited? The Struggle for Autonomy at the End of Life in Italy

Abstract

Politically strident debates surrounding end-of-life decisionmaking have surfaced once again, this time across the Atlantic in Italy. Eluana Englaro died in 2009 after a prolonged court fight, causing the international press to compare her case to that of Theresa Marie Schiavo, who passed away in 2005 in Florida after nearly This Article's analysis of proposed Italian legislation was current as of August, 2010. Political debate has, however, continued in Italy, so that any legislation eventually passed may differ in important ways from that discussed here. * Kathy L. Cerminara, Professor of Law at the Nova Southeastern University Shepard Broad Law Center, is co-author of the nationally known treatise on end-of-life law, The Right to Die: The Law of End-of-Life Decisionmaking (3d ed. Aspen 2004 & annual supps.). She received her J.D. from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and her LL.M. and J.S.D. from Columbia University School of Law. She would like to thank Christopher Brown, Christopher Davis-Traina and Maria Albanese for their excellent assistance on this piece.

Italy’s New Advance Directive Law

“…7 In 2009, Eulana Englaro, a woman in the permanent vegetative state, died after the discontinuation of her feeding tube in the wake of an Italian media firestorm equivalent to that surrounding the case of Theresa Schiavo in the United States, who also suffered from the permanent vegetative state and had her tube removed in 2005. 8 Even as the law was being debated, Marco Cappato, an Italian radical, was being tried for having assisted in the suicide of disc jockey Fabiano Antoniani (who had been paralyzed in an auto accident), by having taken him to Switzerland, where the practice is legal. 9 Although assisted suicide remains illegal in Italy after the law, such cases dominated the media and influenced the debate.…”

“…In 2006, both sides in the debate characterized his public discontinuation of his ventilator, after years of political agitation on the subject of euthanasia, not as forgoing life-sustaining treatment but as euthanasia . In 2009, Eulana Englaro, a woman in the permanent vegetative state, died after the discontinuation of her feeding tube in the wake of an Italian media firestorm equivalent to that surrounding the case of Theresa Schiavo in the United States, who also suffered from the permanent vegetative state and had her tube removed in 2005 . Even as the law was being debated, Marco Cappato, an Italian radical, was being tried for having assisted in the suicide of disc jockey Fabiano Antoniani (who had been paralyzed in an auto accident), by having taken him to Switzerland, where the practice is legal .…”