Rome - Eluana Englaro, the comatose woman at the centre of a
right-to-die debate in Italy, died Monday.
Senate Speaker Renato Schifani made the announcement during a
heated parliament debate on a controversial government bill aimed at
having a life support system reconnected to Englaro.
The 38-year-old Englaro died shortly after 1900 GMT, at an old
persons' home in the north-eastern city of Udine.
Her death came four days after doctors, acting on a court order,
disconnected tubes supplying her body with nutrients and water.
'We pray for her and ask forgiveness to the Lord for all they have
done to her,' the Vatican's top health affairs official, Cardinal
Javier Lozano Barragan, was quoted as saying by the ANSA news agency.
The case of Englaro, who spent the last 17 years in a vegetative
state after a car accident, has fuelled discussion in predominantly
Catholic Italy over euthanasia and its legal technicalities.
In July 2008 Italy's top appeals court, the Cassation, upheld a
ruling in favour of Englaro's father and legal guardian, Beppino, who
had engaged in a more than decade-long legal battle for the right of
his daughter to 'die with dignity.'
Following the announcement of Englaro's death, Welfare Minister
Maurizio Sacconi said the government would press ahead with the bill,
which had been drafted and tabled in parliament earlier Monday to
overturn the Cassation ruling.
The bill specifies that people who are not able to communicate
cannot be deprived of food and water.
But Sacconi, who in recent months had spearheaded attempts to
block the father's attempts to find a medical facility willing to
carry out the court order - including threatening disciplinary action
against doctors - was more reconciliatory on Monday night.
'From our side, there has always been comprehension for the
choices made by Eluana's father even if we did not share them,'
Sacconi said.
Elsewhere however, tensions ran high over the issue which for days
has received blanket media coverage in Italy.
On news of the death, outside the La Quiete old persons' home pro-
life activists began chanting 'Murderers!' at a group of Beppino
Englaro's supporters.
Similar scenes occurred in parliament's upper-house, the Senate,
where Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's conservative government and
the centre-left opposition have been bitterly divided over the issue.
'Eluana did not die, she was killed,' shouted Gaetano Quagliarello
a senior lawmaker in Berlusconi's People of Freedom party, as he
addressed the opposition.
'We are witnessing yet another attempt at political scavenging,'
retorted the centre-left Democratic Party Senate leader, Anna
Finocchiaro. She also said her party, the largest in the opposition,
would no longer participate in debate over the bill.
Berlusconi introduced the bill after Italian President Giorgio
Napolitano on Friday refused to sign a government decree that would
have immediately blocked attempts to terminate Englaro's life.
Napolitano, who as head of state has a say on constitutional
matters, motivated his decision on the grounds that the decree would
have interfered with a procedure approved by Italy's independent
judiciary.
But Roman Catholic Church officials, conservative politicians and
others who have campaigned to keep Englaro alive, say the court order
amounted to euthanasia, a procedure not permitted under Italian law.
While voluntarily terminating a life is forbidden, Italy's
constitution also grants patients the right to refuse medical
treatment.
Some activists are campaigning for legislation allowing the
introduction of 'living wills' whereby people can state what type of
medical treatment they wish to receive.
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