Eluana Englaro (November 25, 1970 – February 9, 2009) was an Italian woman from Lecco, who entered a persistent vegetative state on January 18, 1992, following a car accident, and subsequently became the focus of a court battle between supporters and opponents of euthanasia. Shortly after Englaro had been fed with a probe, her father requested to have her feeding tube removed and to allow her to die "naturally". The authorities initially refused his request, but this decision was later reversed after seventeen years.

The case was debated in court and her father's request was denied both in December 1999 by the Milan Court of Appeal and in April 2005 by the Court of Cassation. A request for a new trial was granted by the Court of Cassation on October 16, 2007.^[1]

The Milan Court of Appeal declared on July 9, 2008 that Eluana's father and legal guardian Beppino Englaro was allowed to suspend feeding and hydration.^[2]

Nuns caring for Eluana since 1994 in Lecco were willing to continue their usual charitable treatment, so her father decided to move her to another hospital in order to have her feeding suspended. Some people split on the Court of appeal's decision, some demonstrated in favour, including Radicali Italiani.

In July 2008, the Italian Parliament brought a jurisdictional conflict before the Final Court of Appeal, stating that the decision was actually changing existing laws. This request was rejected by the Court.

On November 13, 2008, the Italian Constitutional Court, the CCRI awarded Eluana's father the right to stop his daughter from being fed.^[3] The court's decision met with immediate criticism from the Roman Catholic Church.

Beppino Englaro, as he stated in one of his several public appearances, waited until all appeals were concluded before he suspended the feeding of his daughter. On 2 February 2009 she was moved to a private nursing home in Udine, Friuli, and feeding was discontinued.^[4] On February 6, 2009, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi - after declaring that Eluana looked pretty well and "could even give birth to a son" - issued a decree that would have forced the continuation of the treatment of Eluana, and thrust Italy into a constitutional crisis when the President of the Republic refused to sign the decree.^[5] Prime Minister Berlusconi alleged she died at 19:35 (GMT+1) on 9 February 2009. The autopsy in the private nursing house certified the death was caused by the last days' abstention from food.^[6]

The Roman Catholic Church has been critical of the decision that led to Englaro's biological death. When the final judicial decision was handed down, Ennio Cardinal Antonelli, president of the Pontifical Council for the Family objected to the ruling citing Eluana's humanity as cause for her to be treated with dignity and that she is not a 'vegetable'.^[7]

The reaction to Englaro's death was mixed. Rome's mayor, Gianni Alemanno, announced the Colosseum would be lit all night on February 10 to memorialize "a life that could have and should have been saved."^[8] Bioethicist Jacob Appel said that "mercy delayed is mercy denied" and expressed his regret that Englaro's family had to wait seventeen years to effectuate her wishes. However, the conservative bioethicist Wesley J. Smith has leveled criticisism at the decision to withdraw hydration, finding that the supporters of such a decision as portraying a false perception that the withdrawal of hydration has merely benign consequences for the victim, which he illustrates is not the case.^[9]

• Right to die
• Bioethics
• Terri Schiavo

• Striano, Pasquale; Bifulco, Francesca; Servillo, Giuseppe (2009). "The saga of Eluana Englaro: another tragedy feeding the media". Intensive Care Medicine. 35 (6): 1129–31. doi:10.1007/s00134-009-1484-6. PMID 19367396.
• Moratti, Sofia (2010). "The Englaro Case: Withdrawal of Treatment from a Patient in a Permanent Vegetative State in Italy". Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics. 19 (3): 372–80. doi:10.1017/S0963180110000150. PMID 20507685.
• Luchetti, Marco (2010). "Eluana Englaro, chronicle of a death foretold: ethical considerations on the recent right-to-die case in Italy". Journal of Medical Ethics. 36 (6): 333–5. doi:10.1136/jme.2009.034835. PMID 20439332.
• Rubulotta, F; Rubulotta, G; Santonocito, C; Ferla, L; Celestre, C; Occhipinti, G; Ramsay, G (2010). "End-of-life care is still a challenge for Italy". Minerva anestesiologica. 76 (3): 203–8. PMID 20203548.
• Biondi, S. (2009). "Can good law make up for bad politics? The case of Eluana Englaro". Medical Law Review. 17 (3): 447–56. doi:10.1093/medlaw/fwp020. PMID 19758976.
• Baron, CH (2002). "Nutrition and hydration in PVS individuals: the Cruzan, Bland and Englaro cases". Notizie di Politeia. 18 (65): 181–4. PMID 15505920.

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