2024-01-16 21:20:00
The popular initiative law on medically assisted suicide was not passed in the Veneto Regional Council. The Assembly, after the failure to approve in particular article 2 ‘Health care at every stage of the medically assisted suicide process at the request of the sick person’, voted to refer the project to the Commission with 38 votes in favor and 13 absent. popular initiative law ‘Procedures and times for regional healthcare assistance for medically assisted suicide’. The legislative proposal, if it is not addressed in these months, will remain on the agenda of the next legislature. The regulatory text was accompanied by 9,062 signatures collected. Developed and promoted by the ‘Luca Coscioni for freedom of scientific research’ Association, it aims to define compliance with roles, procedures and times for verifying the conditions and methods of access to medically assisted death, so that the aiding suicide does not constitute a crime. Without prejudice to the need for a national law that eliminates discrimination between patients, which is currently in place.
The proposed law
The proposed law is made up of five articles: article 1 ‘Conditions for access to healthcare’ clarifies that the Region guarantees access to medically assisted suicide procedures under the conditions established by national legislation; Article 2 ‘Health care at every stage of the medically assisted suicide process at the request of the sick person’, provides for the establishment of a multidisciplinary medical commission at public health companies responsible for carrying out medical checks relating to the existence of the access conditions and the best methods of carrying out assisted suicide indicated by the Constitutional Court; Article 3 ‘Times for carrying out checks on the conditions and methods referred to in the ruling of the Constitutional Court no. 242 of 2019 for assistance in medically assisted suicide, regulates the procedure and times that the structures of the Regional Health Service, including the ethical committees for clinical practice, must respect in the procedures connected to the provision of assisted suicide treatments, reiterating the principle of inverted compliance (paragraph 7). The procedure is started at the patient’s request and can be suspended and interrupted by the patient at any time; Article 4 ‘Free service’, in line with ministerial indications, provides for free health services connected to medically assisted suicides; Article 5 ‘Invariance clause’, takes into account the non-need for special coverage for the proposed law since it concerns health services that the Region is already required to guarantee and the costs of which must therefore be covered according to the ordinary methods financing of services.
Zaia: “Path on the end of life already defined by the Constitutional Court in 2019”
“The Regional Council does not authorize anything, for the simple fact that the end-of-life path has already been defined by ruling no. 242 of 2019 of the Constitutional Court, which guaranteed medically assisted suicide in the presence of four requirements: an irreversible pathology; a person kept alive by life support treatments; a pathology that creates intolerable physical or psychological suffering; a person who is able to express free and informed consent. I therefore find unacceptable the thesis according to which today the Regional Council authorizes suicide medically assisted: it does not correspond to the truth”. These are the words of the Venetian governor Luca Zaia who spoke today at the Veneto Regional Council.
“I respect everyone’s opinions but, on such a delicate and intimate topic, the priority is to protect fragile people – the president clarified -. My ideas are known, I have already put them down in black and white, but today we are here to see guaranteed a right enshrined as inviolable by our democracy: to allow citizens, who have collected at least 7 thousand signatures, to present and have a specific project examined. of law. The PDL provides certain times for medically assisted suicide: no more than 27 days from the submission of the application to the performance of the service, of which the first 20 are to evaluate the person’s requirements. Furthermore, it specifies the role of Healthcare in the matter, in particular that of the Local Health Authorities. Honestly, I don’t know how constitutionally sustainable it is, but today we are examining a measure that has had the approval of our Legislature. In any case, I repeat, given that all differences of opinion must be respected, I cannot help but find the intervention of the Constitutional Court atypical at the very least.”
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