Assisted suicide in Veneto: the comment of Msgr. Renzo Pegoraro

It is «appropriate for Italy to adopt the obligation to offer palliative care courses to all citizens» with «the burden of finding funds and financing. There is already a good law on palliative care in Italy" but "those who propose themselves as defenders of life must also find the money to implement them. Fewer weapons and more palliative care."

This was stated by Mgr. Avvenire. Renzo Pegoraro, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, after the Veneto law. "There is no right to assistance in suicide" but "the obligation on the State to take care, and also to respect the individual's will not to receive treatment".

Veneto was the first region governed by the center-right to define the times and procedures for medically assisted suicide. The new Venetian law obviously maintains, and is the necessary premise, the perimeter of what was established by the Constitutional Court with a 2019 ruling: the national requirements for obtaining a positive response to medically assisted suicide remain firm, and therefore access is allowed to people suffering from irreversible pathologies, who depend on vital health treatments, who experience physical or psychological suffering considered intolerable, and who are fully capable of understanding and wanting, therefore of making informed and free decisions for their own body. Only the patient can request access at the end of life.

The patient therefore continues to request access to medically assisted suicide from the Ulss (Local Social Health Unit Company of residence). The analysis of the requirements (those of the sentence) is the responsibility of multidisciplinary medical commissions, one for each healthcare company, to be established within thirty days of the entry into force of the law. Its members are identified by the Ulss on a voluntary basis among its employees.

Venetian law establishes that each commission includes a doctor, a neurologist, a psychologist, a psychiatrist, a forensic doctor, a nurse, a palliative care specialist and a bioethicist. The palliative care doctor has a central role: his opinion is not binding within the multidisciplinary commission, but is "strengthened". It means that the commission, if the collegial opinion is contrary to yours, will have to present a detailed justification in order to proceed. From the Local Health Authority commission the decision passes to the ethics committee, which evaluates the patient's choice and gives a definitive opinion. Veneto also adds a regional bioethical committee, whose appointment is up to the regional council, which will express guidelines and a non-binding opinion to be presented to the ethics committee.