Italian premier expresses ‘doubts’ over assisted suicide

Italy’s Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has expressed reservations about a recent court decision decriminalising assisted suicide, in comments to the Corriere della Sera newspaper published Saturday.

Conte said that as a lawyer by training and a Catholic, while he had no doubt about the right to life, he was not so sure about the right to die.

He was speaking to the newspaper after the constitutional court ruled on Wednesday that assisted suicide could be lawful, despite a law forbidding it in Italy.

“To choose to be taken towards death and to ask help from personnel for that, who must be specialised -- there some doubt is permitted,” said Conte.

“And if one did get to that, one would have to at least recognise a conscientious objection for anyone who did not feel capable (of taking part),” he added.

Wednesday’s court ruling stressed that assisted suicide could only concern patients with incurable conditions who were being kept alive artificially and whose physical and psychological suffering was judged to be unbearable.

The patients concerned would also have to be fully capable of taking such a decision freely and consciously, the court added.

The court also made it clear that its decision had been taken in the expectation that parliament would make the relevant changes to existing law.