Time.news – The Minister of Health, Roberto Speranza, relaunches the need and urgency of a law on end of life, prompted by a ruling of the Council. The Court, the minister recalls, “has established that a person, if the requisites that the competent ethics committee must verify are met, have the right to ask a public health service structure for assistance in medically assisted suicide”. That is, the Asl.
Hope’s words are contained in a letter addressed, through La Stampa, to a 43-year-old man who yesterday, in the same columns of the Turin newspaper, had written: “I want to die with dignity, please, now let me go”.
“Dear Mario – writes the minister – first of all I would like to express my deep respect for dignity – which is fully reflected in your letter – with which you are facing your painful condition and trying to get a response from the public health system, in full compliance with the regulations currently in force in the Italian legal system “.
Adding that the letter “deserved a response, the minister writes: ‘Now we will continue to work in silence, for what the government can do within its competences, to allow the most uniform application possible, beyond any legitimate political-cultural position, of the sentence of the Constitutional Court, in strict compliance with the very clear and stringent requirements that it has established”.
Speranza observes that “the end of life is naturally one of those topics on which one is confronted an unsurpassed pluralism of ethical, cultural, theoretical, religious points of view, that in a democratic order like ours can only find its political expression first of all in Parliament “and in this respect” I have been personally convinced for some time of the need and urgency of legislative intervention on the matter, as a minister I have therefore maintained the position of principle that on matters like this there can be no government initiative that overrides or substitutes the role of Parliament ”.
All the more, continues Speranza, that “sentence no. 242 of 2019 of the Constitutional Court, taking note of a legislative deadlock that has been dragging on for years and while hoping for a more organic regulation of the matter by the Parliament, introduced a new fact, making those who facilitate the execution of the intention of suicide no longer punishable’”.
And so, “in the absence of a more general legislative regulation of the matter, of which it has also reiterated the need, the Council has established that a person, if the four requirements listed above occur and that the competent ethics committee must verify, has the right to ask a public health service structure for assistance in medically assisted suicide “. Again, the Asl.
Speranza concludes: “The expectation and the hope for a law cannot therefore exempt everyone, whatever the different legitimate positions on such a delicate issue, from acknowledging that the Council’s ruling cannot be ignored” and is “on on the basis of this belief that the Ministry of Health has already initiated a comparison with the Regions in recent months which aims to overcome two problems that risk hindering the implementation of the Council’s ruling or producing its non-homogeneous application in the various territories “.
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