MILAN, Italy, Jan. 26 (UPI) -- An Italian court says the government of Lombardy must provide a clinic and healthcare workers for a woman trapped in a vegetative state to end her life.
The government had refused to designate a clinic for 38-year-old Eluana Englaro, even after her father won a landmark right-to-die supreme court ruling in November. Monday's regional court decision in Milan said Lombardy "will have to indicate a health clinic" suitable to allow Englaro to die and provide healthcare workers to remove her feeding tubes, ANSA, the Italian news agency, reported.
Englaro's father, Beppino Englaro, told reporters he was "satisfied" with the regional court's decision. He had been waging a battle to find a clinic prepared to carry out the controversial ruling, which has been denounced by Catholic politicians and the Vatican.
"It's a new signal that the magistrature is at the forefront of our country and faithfully interprets its citizens' civil sense," right-to-die advocate Mina Welby told ANSA.
But People of Freedom party Member of Parliament Gabriella Carlucci condemned the ruling as "extremely serious. I still believe that no public structure in the national health service could or should participate in a murder."
