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ROME, ITALY----If Terri Schiavo had lived in Italy, she'd been alive today.
Pinellas County Judge George W. Greer sanctioned judicial homicide of the disabled woman after her husband, Michael Schiavo, convinced Greer that although she wasn't terminally ill, she wouldn't want to be kept alive by a feeding tube.
She had left no written directive and the determination to end her life was made by Greer based on self-serving hearsay testimony given by Schiavo, supported by two of his family members. Their testimony was contrary to that of Terri's family who fought Schiavo in the courts for nearly 15 years, trying to save her life.
Schiavo claimed that the brain injured woman, who was able to breathe on her own and required no life sustaining machines, had expressed her wishes to him orally. Greer ruled, contrary to Florida law, that she couldn't be given food and water orally.
She died on March 31, 2005, of dehydration, 13 days after her feeding tube was removed.
In Rome, although a terminally ill man, paralyzed by the ravages of muscular dystrophy, has requested to be removed from a respirator which will cause his death, an Italian judge has refused, saying that Italian law does not allow a physician or health care facility to deny lifesaving care.
Piergiorgio Welby, 60, had asked Italy's president to legalize the withdrawal of his life support but although the country's Radical Party supports his cause, so far there have been no legislative efforts to change the law which would allow him to die as he wishes.
Welby is on a feeding tube, breathes with a respirator and communicates with a voice synthesizer.
While agreeing that Welby has a constitutional right to stop his treatment, Judge Angela Salvio has ruled that Italy's medical code requires physicians to maintain a patient's life. "Even when faced with the request of the patient, physicians must not carry out….treatments aimed at causing death", she wrote in her decision.
In her order rejecting Welby's appeal, she wrote that "the legal system makes no specific disciplinary provision on the orientation of the doctor-patient relationship and on the conduct of the doctor, with the aim of carrying out the practice of the principle of independent decision making in the final phase of a persons' life when the request deals with the refusal or the interruption of medical treatment or maintenance of the patient".
She wrote that "the fundamental principle is that of life", and said that the country's criminal code punishes "consented killing and assisted suicide" and that the civil code "prohibits deciding how to deal with one's own body such that determines permanent damage". Her decision said that Italy's penal code outlaws the "homicide of a consenting person and helping (someone) to commit suicide".
Florida's state laws prohibit euthanasia and assisted suicide but that didn't deter Schiavo and Greer in ending Terri's life.
Welby's doctor has said that if his respirator were removed, he would be legally obligated to reattach it.
The judge urged the legislature to "take up the task of interpreting the growing social and cultural sensibility about the care of the terminally ill, of giving answers to the solitude and desperation of the ill" to fill the void in the law.
The ruling has sharply divided political and church leaders in the country. The Roman Catholic Church carries significant influence and teaches that life should reach its' "natural end".
Sen. Rocco Buttiglione, a political leader said to be close to the Vatican, supported the judge's ruling saying that she was interpreting "law and conscience. No one can order someone to kill".
Vatican officials had harshly criticized the removal of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube. While church officials had said they were opposed to keeping a person alive at all costs, especially if medical intervention prolongs the patient's agony, the Vatican had insisted that artificially feeding and hydrating a person in a vegetative state does not constitute aggressive therapy.
Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace had issued a statement which said that "If Mr. Schiavo succeeds legally in causing the death of his wife, this not only would be tragic in itself, but would be a grave step toward the legal approval of euthanasia in the United States".
Pope John Paul II had said doctors have a moral duty to preserve life and said that "while palliative treatment in the final stage of life can be encouraged, avoiding a "treatment at all costs" mentality, it will never be permissible to resort to actions or omission which by their nature or in the intention of the person acting are designed to bring about death".
"The administration of water and food, even when provided by artificial means, always represents a natural way of preserving life….not a medical procedure".
"The end of life is a question only in the hands of God. This is our belief. It is not something that must be in the hands of politicians or in the hands of physicians... but in the hands of God only," the Vatican had said.
"No one can be the arbiter of life except God himself."
Judge George Greer played God and ended the life of Terri Schiavo.
12-16-06
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© 2006 North
Country Gazette
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