Mercy Killing?

Is it to be considered as merciful to allow a brain-dead woman's body to be kept quick? Her condition knows no salvation. Her body is being medically, scientifically, halted from corrupting, but it is a hollow shell, and has been for the past 17 years. An agony to her family, who wish nothing better for their beloved child than to bury the past, to no longer have to face the anguish of her artificial presence, a rebuke to their ability to end their suffering and the charade of her fictitious existence.

Eluana Englaro lost her life for all practical purposes, in a car accident that occurred seventeen years ago when she was a vibrant 20-year-old. She has been in a coma ever since. She, like all such victims of tragedy whose consciousness and soul evaporates into nothingness never to resurface, bears no physical resemblance to the blooming young woman she once was. Her father has been attempting for the past ten years, to have life support withdrawn, to allow her the final dignity of burial.

In predominantly Roman Catholic Italy some regions of the country had offered to step in and allow her to expire when Milan, capital of Lombardy, the second largest city close to where Ms. Englaro remains hospitalized refused to permit hospitals under its jurisdiction to comply with her family's request. However, even they have been forced to withdraw their offers of assistance, under pressure from Italy's minister of health.

Maurizio Sacconi, the health minister, warned subsidized state hospitals that they would face "unimaginable consequences" were they to suspend life support for this poor woman. More to the point, the Catholic Church is fierce in its resistance toward any form of euthanasia, and has pointedly warned against halting the artificial feeding of the now-37-old woman. The Archbishop of Turin, Severino Poletto, said that to do so would clearly represent an act of euthanasia.

Clearly, it is not to be seen as an act of compassion.

Now the governor of Piedmont is prepared to disregard the objections of government officials to assist the family of Eluana in their search to end this travesty of prolonged death in the guise of protecting the sanctity of human life. As a consequence, the daily newspaper of the Italian Catholic Church has accused the court which ruled in the family's favour to have her life support system removed, of "necrophilia".

The Church will most certainly disallow a religious funeral for the young woman, further exacerbating her family's pain and sorrow.