Tuscany is the first region to provide medically assisted suicide for patients in its territory and other regions have already announced that they will adopt similar initiatives to guarantee freedom of choice to their citizens.
A popular initiative law has been presented and approved that allows people who are kept alive by life-support treatments and who suffer from irreversible pathologies to request medical assistance for voluntary death.
The initiative involved over 10 signatories and was promoted by the Luca Coscioni Association, which has always been committed to end-of-life choices. The law provides for a maximum limit of 20 days to evaluate whether there are the requirements for access to assisted suicide and provides that the costs are entirely borne by the regional budget.
The approved law is based on the 2019 and 2024 rulings of the Constitutional Court, according to which: “a person kept alive by life-sustaining treatments and affected by an irreversible pathology, a source of physical or psychological suffering that he or she deems intolerable, but fully capable of making free and informed decisions, provided that such conditions and the methods of execution have been verified by a public structure of the national health service, following the opinion of the territorially competent ethics committee”.
The intervention of the Constitutional Court, of associations and the recourse to popular initiative laws were the reactions to the inability of the Parliament, still inert, to intervene on fundamental issues for the affirmation of civil liberties and human rights.
Indeed, the Constitutional Court itself has repeatedly called for both its rulings and the annual report of the High Court, the urgency with which the legislator must intervene on issues that affect the freedoms of each individual, such as the end of life, but also on the rights of children of same-sex couples.
Issues on which the majorities that have followed one another in Parliament have never legislated, perhaps because of the need to deploy knowledge and sensitivity skills that are difficult to find or perhaps in order to preserve their own electorate.
Marcus Barbatus
Article published on 12 February 2025 - 20:46
Tuscany's decision on physician-assisted suicide is a very complicated and difficult issue. It is important that people have the freedom to choose, but there are also many ethical aspects that must be carefully considered before proceeding.