Italian euthanasia row woman moved from clinic

ItalyUdine, Italy - A comatose woman at the centre of a bitter euthanasia debate in Italy arrived at the old-peoples home Tuesday where doctors plan to switch off her life-support system.

Pro-life activists heckled the ambulance carrying 38-year old Eluana Englaro as it left a clinic in the northern city of Lecco late Monday night, shouting: "Don't let her die!"

The case of Englaro, who has spent the last 17 years in a vegetative state after a car accident, has reignited debate in Catholic Italy over euthanasia and its legal technicalities.

Englaro's father, Beppino, decided to move his daughter to the home, La Quiete, in Udine after doctors there said they would be willing to carry out a court order allowing the termination of her life.

But conservative politicians and Vatican officials say the court order amounts to euthanasia, a procedure not permitted under Italian law, and have strongly condemned the decision.

Englaro has been kept alive at the clinic by water and nutrients fed into her body from a network of tubes. According to news reports, doctors plan to disconnect the tubes from Eluana's body later this week. It is estimated that she will die within 15 days after this takes place.

"An abominable murder," is how the Vatican's senior health affairs official, Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, in a interview published Tuesday, described any attempt to allow Eluana to "die of hunger and thirst."

"With all respect one can have for court rulings, the position of the Church remains the same ... not just in Eluana's case, but each time there's a need to safeguard life," Barragan told Rome-daily La Repubblica.

Italy's Welfare Minister Maurizio Sacconi said the government was "evaluating the situation."

Since a July 2008 ruling by Italy's top court, the Cassation, upheld Beppino Englaro's request to allow his daughter to die, Sacconi and other government officials have threatened disciplinary action against clinics and doctors willing to carry out the order.

Eluana fell into a vegetative state after a 1992 car accident. Since then her father has fought a drawn-out legal battle to end what he describes as the "inhuman and degrading" conditions his daughter has been forced to live.

In repeated court cases, Beppino Englaro says he provided evidence that before the accident, Eluana had clearly expressed the wish to die rather than being left in a coma or a vegetative state.

While voluntarily terminating a life is forbidden, Italy's constitution also grants patients the right to refuse medical treatment.

Conservative lawmakers in Italy, backed by the Vatican, strongly oppose euthanasia on the grounds that life is sacred.

Pro-euthanasia activists are campaigning for legislation allowing the introduction of "living wills" whereby people can state what type of medical treatment they wish to receive. (dpa)

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