Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition
Carmelo Leotta, one of the lawyer for four people who are asking the Italian court for equal legal protections, sent an explanation of a court intervention concerning assisted suicide. The intevention concerns four people who want to live who are arguing for the equality of persons with disabilities. Leotta writes:
On March 26, 2025, the Italian Constitutional Court will return to decide on aiding suicide (i.e., Article 580 of the Italian Penal Code, which punishes a person who helps another person commit suicide).
In 2019, in Judgment No. 242, the Court decided that the Italian Criminal Law does not have to punish a person who helps another to commit suicide if the person who wants to commit suicide is:
In 2019, in Judgment No. 242, the Court decided that the Italian Criminal Law does not have to punish a person who helps another to commit suicide if the person who wants to commit suicide is:
- capable of making free and informed decisions,
- ill with an incurable disease,
- who has suffering that he or she considers intolerable,
- who have ongoing life-support treatment. “Life-support treatment” is the treatment that ensures the patient's vital functions, that is, it is that treatment that if it is discontinued results in the patient's death in a short time. Life-support treatment, for example, is being attached to an artificial respirator or being fed with a nasogastric tube or having a permanent catheter.
The issue that the Court is being asked to decide on March 26, 2025 concerns the possible removal of the 4th requirement, which would expand the number of people who can request assisted suicide. Assisted suicide could be requested by people who:
What's new in the March 26, 2025 trial is that there are four people applying for admission as witnesses to the case who want equal legal protection. Two people have already given testimony in favor of expanding assisted suicide. These four new people are seeking to offer a different view than the one already given.
The attorneys for the four people are Mario Esposito, (full professor of constitutional law in the University of Lecce, a lawyer from Rome) and Carmelo Leotta, (associate professor of criminal law in the European University of Rome, a lawyer from Turin).
The four people are:
But why are they asking to participate in the process?
1. If the Court decides to take away the requirement of life-support treatment, the lives of the four people would be less protected. The preservation of their lives would only depend on their willingness to live; in fact, the state would no longer punish the person who assisted them kill themselves. It is similar to allowing a person to put a loaded gun on the bedside table of someone who is sick. These four witnesses do not want the Italian state to allow this and they do not want the gun. The four people also consider this as an offense to their dignity, it is like saying, “if you want, go ahead and pull the trigger, you can throw your life away, because to us, your life is worth less than everyone else's. In fact, we punish those who help a healthy person kill die by suicide because his life has value, but because you are sick we allow another to put the gun on your table and we will not punish those who help kill you. In short, if you want to die we will facilitate this, and do it because you are sick and your life is therefore deserves less protection than a healthy person’s life.”
2. Another consequence is that their dignity as people would not be equal to the dignity that healthy people have, because sick people who die by suicide, those who help them are not punished, whereas if a healthy person dies by suicide, those who help them are punished. This means that the state does not adversely judge the helping of the sick person to commit suicide (in fact, it does not punish those who assist a seriously ill person to commit suicide) but continues to punish the assisting of the healthy person to commit suicide. This false view of compassion violates the principle of equality, that dignity is accorded to all people equally.
This trial is of great legal interest because the 4 speople are effectively asking the Constitutional Court to be no longer only the supreme judge of who's life is worthy of equal protection in the law.
- are capable of making free and informed decisions,
- who have an incurable disease,
- who have suffering that they deem intolerable.
What's new in the March 26, 2025 trial is that there are four people applying for admission as witnesses to the case who want equal legal protection. Two people have already given testimony in favor of expanding assisted suicide. These four new people are seeking to offer a different view than the one already given.
The attorneys for the four people are Mario Esposito, (full professor of constitutional law in the University of Lecce, a lawyer from Rome) and Carmelo Leotta, (associate professor of criminal law in the European University of Rome, a lawyer from Turin).
The four people are:
- capable of making free and informed decisions
- have incurable diseases
- have had/may have intolerable suffering
But why are they asking to participate in the process?
1. If the Court decides to take away the requirement of life-support treatment, the lives of the four people would be less protected. The preservation of their lives would only depend on their willingness to live; in fact, the state would no longer punish the person who assisted them kill themselves. It is similar to allowing a person to put a loaded gun on the bedside table of someone who is sick. These four witnesses do not want the Italian state to allow this and they do not want the gun. The four people also consider this as an offense to their dignity, it is like saying, “if you want, go ahead and pull the trigger, you can throw your life away, because to us, your life is worth less than everyone else's. In fact, we punish those who help a healthy person kill die by suicide because his life has value, but because you are sick we allow another to put the gun on your table and we will not punish those who help kill you. In short, if you want to die we will facilitate this, and do it because you are sick and your life is therefore deserves less protection than a healthy person’s life.”
2. Another consequence is that their dignity as people would not be equal to the dignity that healthy people have, because sick people who die by suicide, those who help them are not punished, whereas if a healthy person dies by suicide, those who help them are punished. This means that the state does not adversely judge the helping of the sick person to commit suicide (in fact, it does not punish those who assist a seriously ill person to commit suicide) but continues to punish the assisting of the healthy person to commit suicide. This false view of compassion violates the principle of equality, that dignity is accorded to all people equally.
This trial is of great legal interest because the 4 speople are effectively asking the Constitutional Court to be no longer only the supreme judge of who's life is worthy of equal protection in the law.
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1 comment:
This is the most convincing and clear way to contest euthanasia legalization. It is obvious that taking away a lifejacket makes boaters less safe. To judge that any class of people should have their lifejackets removed would be an obvious discriminatory attack. The exact same thing is true of euthanasia. To legalize it is to withdraw legal protections, from some, that remain for all others.
Furthermore, this argument has nothing to do, specifically, with the disabled. A legalization of euthanasia for the terminally ill It is just as discriminatory for that group. It is a pity that no one has yet attempted a law suit on that basis. One might say that it would be difficult to find people who are terminally ill who would also be able to represent themselves in court. But that is not so. There are very articulate people who know they are dying. It would simply require a continuos recruitment process so that those who died would be replaced, and that, for as long as the process might take.
To dismiss such a suit, it would be necessary for the judge to find that the benefit of death for some members of that class of person (who wish to die) outweighs the discriminatory harm done to others (who do not). In other words: that the risk of wrongly remaining alive is worse than the risk of wrongfully dying. I think that finding would be very difficult.
And if it were made, we could come back with specific levels of risk, as in the risk of being "informed" of the right to die by doctors. I think that once the full logic of discrimination had been played out in the initial case, and the judges had opted for death in such-and-so special and limited circumstances, it would be very difficult to defend systematically aggressing every seriously ill person as is now standard practice in much of Canada.
But the main point is simplicity. The more this argument is simplified, and the less adjacent arguments which are allowed to dilute it, the greater will be the chances of success.
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