"I am autonomous in nothing, except in thought."
These are the words of Paola R. the 89-year-old woman, very seriously ill with Parkinson's, who died today in a Swiss clinic, where she was able to obtain assisted suicide.
Accompanying her, with an action of civil disobedience, were Felicetta Maltese and Virginia Fiume, two activists of the Legal Euthanasia campaign, launched by the Luca Coscioni Association, who now risk from 5 to 12 years in prison.
Paola obtained in Switzerland what she would have liked to have access to in her home in Bologna: medical help to end a suffering that had become unbearable due to an irreversible disease.
"The decision - explained Paola in a letter - has matured over time. Since 2012 a beginning of malaise, diagnosed in 2015. A gradual and slow course towards total immobility. Now I am vigilant in a body that has become a cage without space or hope. Indeed tightens, hour after hour, the inexorable grip. The diagnosis is an irreversible and ferocious parkinsonism that has reached a stage that no longer allows me to live".
"Paola was forced to go abroad" due to "discrimination between patients resulting from the decision with which the Constitutional Court in 2019 decriminalized assisted suicide only for patients under certain conditions", explains Filomena Gallo, lawyer and secretary of the Coscioni Association.
In our country, in fact, it is legal only when the person who requests it is affected by an irreversible pathology, a source of intolerable physical or psychological suffering, fully capable of making decisions and is kept alive by life support treatments, as in the case by Federico Carboni, who was able to access "assisted suicide" last June.
Paola, on the other hand, could not access "assisted suicide"
in Italy because she did not meet one of the requirements established by the sentence of the Consulta 242/2019 relating to the Cappato-Antoniani case, i.e. she was not kept alive by life support treatments.
"The Constitutional Court has repeatedly urged Parliament to enact a law that, without discrimination, respects end-of-life choices", comments the lawyer Gallo.
For this reason "it will once again be the courts that will intervene on individual cases and, once again, faced with the lack of political will, it will be the jurisprudence that will protect people's rights".
Tomorrow morning, Virginia Fiume and Felicetta Maltese will go to the Carabinieri barracks Judicial Police Section in Bologna.
They will be accompanied by Marco Cappato, who will report himself as the legal representative of the Civil Rescue association, which organized and financed the trip to Switzerland.
"Every minute spent with Mrs. Paola was a hymn to her life. Accompanying her on this journey and choosing to report us - declare Fiume and Maltese - means making our freedom available to protect a fundamental human right".
Meanwhile, the list of people who have given their willingness to take part in civil disobedience at the end of their life is extended to 17, joining their names to those of Mina Welby and Gustavo Fraticelli.
Among those ready to even risk prison, as Cappato did who accompanied Dj Fabo to Switzerland, there is also the doctor from Campobasso Mino Dentizzi.
"Enlargement - explained Cappato - is essential to meet an ever increasing demand. The number of people to whom, in the last 12 months, we have first provided information and then, in some cases, practical help has increased by 111%. to access assisted suicide".
