The Vatican on end-of-life care: ‘Less funding for weapons and more for palliative care’
Veneto was the first region governed by the centre-right to set out the timetable and procedures for medically assisted suicide
Key points
‘It would be appropriate for Italia to introduce a requirement to offer palliative care programmes to all citizens’, with ‘the responsibility for securing the necessary funds and funding. ‘There is already a good law on palliative care in Italia’, but ‘those who claim to be defenders of life must also find the money to implement it. Fewer weapons and more palliative care’.
Monsignor Renzo Pegoraro, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, made this statement to *Avvenire* following the passing of the Veneto law. “There is no right to assisted suicide,” but “the State has a duty to provide care, and also to respect an individual’s wish not to receive treatment.”
The law in Veneto
Veneto was the first region governed by the centre-right to set out the timeframe and procedures for medically assisted suicide. The new Veneto law naturally retains – and this is a necessary prerequisite – the scope of what was established by the Constitutional Court in a 2019 ruling: the national requirements for obtaining approval for medically assisted suicide remain in place; consequently, access is granted to people suffering from irreversible conditions, who are dependent on life-sustaining medical treatment, who experience physical or psychological suffering deemed intolerable, and who are fully capable of understanding and making decisions, and thus to make informed and free decisions regarding their own body. Only the patient may request access to end-of-life care.
The patient therefore continues to apply to the Local Health Authority (ULSS) in their area of residence for access to medically assisted suicide. The assessment of eligibility criteria (as set out in the judgement) is the responsibility of multidisciplinary medical committees, one for each health authority, to be established within thirty days of the law coming into force. Their members are appointed by the ULSS on a voluntary basis from amongst its staff.
Venetian law stipulates that each committee must comprise a doctor, a neurologist, a psychologist, a psychiatrist, a forensic pathologist, a nurse, a palliative care specialist and a bioethicist. The palliative care specialist plays a central role: whilst their opinion is not binding within the multidisciplinary committee, it is ‘reinforced’. This means that if the committee reaches a collective decision contrary to theirs, it must provide a detailed justification in order to proceed. From the local health authority (USL) committee, the decision is passed to the ethics committee, which assesses the patient’s choice and issues a final opinion. The Veneto region also includes a regional bioethics committee, appointed by the regional executive, which will draw up guidelines and issue a non-binding opinion to be presented to the ethics committee.
