ITALIAN COURT STIRS UP EUTHANASIA DEBATE

FLORENCE, Italy, June 26, 2002 (LSN.ca) – It is legal to remove life support from a terminally-ill patient, an Italian appeals court has ruled—unless is can be proven that the patient was alive at the time. Pro-life politicians say the decision creates loopholes for abuse by euthanasia proponents, because it may not be possible to prove that someone was alive when the plug was pulled.  “The state of death is not an opinion, which can be changed from a judgment to another,” said conservative Senator Riccardo Pedrizzi. “In this way, judges take the place of doctors, and create a serious precedent and a dangerous judicial opening.”  However, Dr. Roberto Anzalone, president of the Milan Medical Association, told Reuters: “[The judge] evaluated a single case. In that specific case there was the doubt that he murdered a dead person, thus he murdered nobody. It would be dangerous to slide into generalizations.”  In her 41-page ruling, Judge Maria Ocello reaffirmed that under Italian law, “making the event of death come earlier even by one second is equal to homicide,” but there was no clear evidence that Enzo Forzatti’s wife was alive when he disconnected her life support machine while brandishing an unloaded gun at hospital staff in 1998. The ruling overturned Forzatti’s six-year sentence for murder.  For a Reuters story on the case see:  https://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020625/hl_nm/italy_euthanasia_1   For LifeSite coverage of the euthanasia debate in Europe see:  * Netherlands – https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2002/jan/02010204.html * Germany – https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2002/may/02053005.html