The Italian Schiavo

Secular Right:

Italy is being wracked by a Terry Schiavo-esque political feeding-tube fight. In 1992, Eluana Englaro, then 21-years-old, was in a serious car accident and struck comatose. Two years later, her doctors declared her condition irreversible. Since then, she has been on feeding tubes in a vegetative state. Last November, Englaro’s father won a court order allowing her feeding tubes to be disconnected, but Italy’s Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, has fought to keep her on life-support. Catholic newspapers accuse the father of wanting to kill his daughter; the Catholic Church has forcefully insisted that the government must keep Englaro alive.

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