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Rating: The book
Giuseppe (Beppino) Englaro, father of the young Eluana Englaro, a girl from Bergamo who was in an irreversible coma from 1992 until her death, recounts, with the help of Adriana Pannitteri, the vicissitudes of his fight to assert the principle that no individual should be kept "alive" against their will, enjoying the right to dispose of their own life when it is no longer worth living.
Eluana's passing did not stop a battle that the author wants to continue in memory of his daughter but to the potential benefit of anyone.
Antigone revisited?
De Lorenzo's comment
I hope users not familiar with classical literature will forgive me if, to analyze this book, I begin with the memory of a classic tragedy like Sophocles' Antigone (but I also recall a reinterpretation by Brecht, for fair balance): briefly recounting that ancient tale, I remember how in the Sophoclean drama, the young Antigone fought for the right to give proper burial to her brother Polynices' body, an enemy of the city otherwise destined, according to the laws of the time, to become food for dogs; she opposed Creon, Tebe's tyrant, who claimed for himself the right to enforce the timeless laws of the ancestors, which imposed such treatment on the local populace's enemies as a final sanction for betraying the founding rules of social organization.
The conflict between individual moral conscience - represented by Antigone - and the civilized objective law - represented by Creon - was evident in all its drama (individual, collective, social, and state), proving not easily resolvable, and thus, a true tragic dilemma, in the very sense usually attributed to the term, where every final choice was, at the same time, right and wrong, considering the heterogeneous nature of the values at play, and the opposing goals they pursued.
Giving burial to Polynices was a mandatory act for the sister, a compassionate woman appalled at the sight of the corpse defaced by animals; denying it was necessary for a ruler who had to look beyond individual cases and legislate for everyone and an indefinite period, detaching himself from the allure of the present or the concrete situation.
The tragedy of Antigone, as I think all readers know, resurfaced in Italy in 2008-2009 in the guise of the "Englaro case", a particularly painful affair debated over stopping the medical treatment assured to a woman in an irreversible coma since 1992, who, according to her father and close relatives, had expressly requested not to be kept "alive" should she be found in such a condition.
Representing the young woman's will was her father, Beppino Englaro, who, in stopping the medical treatment, did not want to follow the common practice in various public and private hospital facilities, where, in such cases, a tacit and gradual euthanasia of the patient would proceed, but wanted to be directly authorized by the law, and thus by a State, which, on this matter, has always hidden behind the sometimes hypocritical veil of tacit common sense, without providing a clear regulatory framework for intervention and allowing everyone to act according to their convenience and personal convictions.
Englaro's fight, already a Socialist Party militant under Bettino Craxi, therefore transcended a purely individual dimension to become a principle struggle and political action, aiming to prompt a change in the Law's orientations and the State's punitive role, yet finding opposition from all political sides - from left to right - intent, in this matter, on ensuring maximum protection of life and the individual's vitality, even reversing the terms of the traditional Sophoclean conflict between the individual and the State.
In asking the State to acknowledge his daughter's situation and that of other individuals hospitalized under similar conditions, Englaro moved away from Antigone's paradigm, asking that his own "law of the heart" become State Law and a general model of action, enabling all individuals to forgo, even through advance directives, invasive treatments on their bodies, inadequate to allow for full and dignified survival.
Thus, we have a modern Antigone, who, in fact, asks that the "law of the heart" become the State's law, albeit an exceptional one, shared by a Creon attentive to pluralism and the many possible viewpoints, when it comes to fundamental values like life, vitality, and end-of-life.
Englaro was and is opposed, in multifaceted and "plural" terms, by the State, represented by the parliamentary majority and the Government, objecting, with stringent and somewhat relentless logic, that fundamental and unavailable rights are at stake, which, in legislating, could at best intervene with decisions in favor of life and its preservation, rather than with decisions aimed at endorsing suicidal or homicidal practices, exceptionally admitted only with regard to abortion, in view of the need to primarily protect the health, also mental, of the pregnant woman who does not consider carrying the pregnancy to term.
We thus have a modern Creon, who, compared to the classical model, represents the reasons of life and heart by abstaining from intervening in a particularly delicate matter, where more profound risks can be seen, underlying, linked to the evolution of science and technology: consider eugenic practices, or extensive interpretations of a possible right to a good death exercised by objectively mildly handicapped individuals, but perceived subjectively as devastating; or again, the exercise of a right to a good death by elderly individuals, who have no family ready to care for them or who, due to the lack of suitable social facilities, feel abandoned by the community and Institutions.
It is clear that we are dealing with issues of particular delicacy where every attempt to resolve the conflict into unity creates further problems and complexities, being easy, in these cases even more than in all other topics I examine in my essays, to believe that one is on the side of reason, supporting the fantastic progressive fate of humanity, only to find oneself on the side of superficial and banal error, and, for this, all the more evil.
I confess, I myself do not know how to respond: volunteering at animal shelters, I see how practicing euthanasia on animal friends who have reached an excess of suffering constitutes a genuine act of mercy and the last gift that can be given to these Creatures, and I wonder why it is so difficult to admit to ourselves that such mercy is deserved, even more so, by humans; visiting hospices and hospitals for similar reasons, and seeing the loneliness of the sick, whether seriously or mildly ill, I wonder if a gentle death could really be the solution to their problems, or whether we should be less selfish and try to help these people, even in their suffering.
Then there are the borderline cases, like that of Eluana: and being a borderline case, I wonder whether Sophocles wasn't right, along with the classics, in suggesting that such devastating and unique events cannot be generalized, and that there are neither moral laws nor State Laws that can allow us to escape these logical, conceptual, and value traps.
As Cardinal Ruini wisely observed, deciding on the Eluana case is a "tragically wrong" choice, where the attentive cardinal could not ignore the core concept of Tragedy.
I hope the delicacy of the case leads to a serious debate on the issue, leaving aside political present-day controversies, rather than to the trivializing interventions with which my writings have been mocked and defaced by the site's average users.
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