Euthanasia again before the Consulta

Euthanasia arrives this morning at the Constitutional Court, where a long-awaited hearing is scheduled. At issue is the legitimacy of the rule of the Criminal Code, Article 579, which still punishesthe murder of a consenting person. Where it is the person who carries out the will of others to commit suicide that is condemned, in the event that the sick person, due to physical impossibility and the absence of suitable devices, cannot proceedin autonomy or when the alternative modalities of self-administration of the lethal drug are not accepted due to a reasoned and not unreasonable choice.

The issue was raised by the Court of Florence, for which the conduct of facilitating or inducing suicide, provided for by Article 580 of the Code, on the one hand is close to that of homicide of the consenting person, especially in cases of "aiding and abetting" practised in terminal life situations. However, by way of interpretation, it is not possible to frame the conduct of the person who materially causes death substituting himself in practice to the would-be suicide, in the offence instead of aiding or inciting suicide and therefore, under the conditions already outlined by the Constitutional Court itself in judgment no. 242/2019, in the area of non-punishability. In fact, aiding and abetting suicide presupposes that the act is in any case carried out directly by the ill person, despite the presence of extraneous conduct of facilitation, and that the same person maintains control over the action (Court of Cassation, 26015/2023).

Nor is it possible, the Tuscan judges recall, to extend by way of interpretation by the ordinary judge the conditions dictated by Constitutional Court ruling No. 242/2019 to the different incriminating case of Article 579 of the Criminal Code.

Thus, according to the order of referral to the Constitutional Court, there isa contrast with Article 3 of the Constitution due to the unreasonable disparity of treatment between situations that are substantially identical. All things being equal (a person kept alive by life-support treatment and suffering from an irreversible pathology, the source of physical or psychological suffering that he considers intolerable), the patient's right to self-determination is conditioned by a fact (the possibility of self-administration of the lethal drug) that is entirely accidental, depending on the person's clinical condition, the way the disease manifests itself and its progression.

The case that will be examined today in the public hearing of the Constitutional Court is that of a 55-year-old woman, suffering from progressive multiple sclerosis, completely paralysed and kept alive by life-support treatment. She meets all the requirements for access to medically assisted suicide established by the Constitutional Court in its 2019 ruling, however, she is physically unable to independently take the lethal drug: she is completely paralysed from the neck down, has difficulty swallowing and depends on her caregivers for all daily activities. She refused deep sedation in the desire to maintain lucidity and consciousness until the end.