Woman in Italian right-to-die case dies

Eluana Englaro, the comatose woman at the centre of a right-to-die case in Italy, died on Monday evening despite an attempt by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to order doctors to keep her alive through a feeding tube.

The 38-year-old Ms Englaro had been in a coma since a 1992 car crash. Nutrition was stopped four days ago at the request of the family.

The case divided mainly Catholic Italy, with daily demonstrations and sit-ins by those who favoured letting her die and those who said it was tantamount to murder.

It also led to a constitutional crisis pitting Berlusconi against the head of state and provoked a debate about whether the Vatican was unduly interfering.

Mr Berlusconi said in a statement he was "deeply pained" to hear of Ms Englaro's death and was "very sad that the government's attempt to save a life were rendered impossible".

A moment of silence was observed in the Senate, which was debating a law that would have forced the clinic in northern Italy where she was hospitalised to resume feeding her through a tube.

The silence quickly turned to shouting and finger pointing as centre-left and centre-right politicians accused one another of trying to make capital from the case that has riveted Italy for months and raised the ire of the Vatican.

"She didn't die. She was killed," Gaetano Quagliarello, a centre-right senator from Berlusconi's party, shouted in the Senate as other lawmakers screamed "murderers, murderers" towards the centre-left benches.

Ms Englaro was called Italy's Terri Schiavo, the American woman in a vegetative state who was allowed to die in 2005 after a long legal fight.

"May the Lord forgive those who brought her to this point," said Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, the Vatican's health minister, who backed Mr Berlusconi's attempts to force the clinic to resume feeding.

He told Ansa news agency that he would consider it "a crime if any human intervention was decisive in her death".

Catholic activists who were opposed to stopping nutrition said magistrates should order the woman's body sequestered pending an autopsy and a full judicial investigation.

"Something very strange has happened," said Gianluigi Gigli, head of the For Eluana anti-euthanasia group.

Doctors had stopped the feeding only last Friday and many had expected her to live several weeks longer.

The woman's father battled his way through Italy's courts for 10 years to have her feeding tube disconnected, saying it was her wish not to be kept alive artificially. "I just want to be alone," he said after his daughter died.

Mr Berlusconi issued an emergency decree on Friday ordering doctors to resume feeding the woman, but it was rejected as unconstitutional by President Giorgio Napolitano.

"If she was killed she was killed by our hypocrisy and our slowness," said Pier Ferdinando Casini, a Catholic MP who opposed the stopping of feeding but said politicians should have passed a comprehensive law on end-of-life issues long ago.

For the third day in succession, Pope Benedict indirectly referred to the case, telling the new Brazilian ambassador to the Vatican that "the sanctity of life must be safeguarded from conception to its natural end".

Factbox

Following are the main events that has split mainly Catholic Italy.

January 18, 1992 - Eluana Englaro suffers severe brain damage in a car crash and enters a coma. Doctors later say her condition is irreversible. In 1999 Englaro's father, Beppino, starts his legal battle to have her feeding tube removed, saying that before the accident she had stated her wish not to be kept alive artificially. Several court rulings in 1999, 2003 and 2006 reject his case.

July 9, 2008 - A Milan appeals court, for the first time in Italy, authorises Ms Englaro's father to disconnect her feeding tube as long as he follows proper medical guidelines. State prosecutors appeal against the ruling.

October 8, 2008 - Italy's top court rejects the state prosecutors' appeal and says Beppino can disconnect the feeding tube.

December 17, 2008 - Health Minister Maurizio Sacconi issues an order barring all state and private hospitals from implementing the court ruling. A regional court later says that order is null and void.

February 3, 2009 - Eluana Englaro is taken to a clinic in the city of Udine after several hospitals turn her down, fearing retaliation from the government.

February 6, 2009 - Doctors stop feeding Ms Englaro to allow her to die. President Giorgio Napolitano refuses to sign an emergency decree by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's Cabinet ordering doctors to resume feeding her. The government then passes a draft Bill to be approved by Parliament.

February 9, 2009 - The Senate starts discussing the Bill. The government says the Udine clinic hosting Englaro does not meet legal requirements, but regional inspectors say they found no problems.