The heart-wrenching case of a woman in a coma for 17 years and the father who wants to end her life has been transformed by Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, with quiet but forceful backing from the Vatican, into an attempt to short-circuit the Italian constitution, enhancing his own powers. Eluana Englaro, 38, suffered massive brain damage in a car crash when she was 21, leaving her in a persistent vegetative state. After struggling for years through the courts to stop the force-feeding, her father, Beppino, finally won the backing of the Court of Cassation, Italy's highest court, last year. But Catholic politicians supported by the Church establishment fought on despite the court's verdict and the case has turned into a battle royal for the "pro-life" lbby.One of the arguments that the fetus fetishists are shrieeeking over and over, as a justification for maintaining the mechanically-assisted "life support" system that keeps her reflexive biological functions still operative, is that Eluana is still capable of conceiving and gestating.
...in an extraordinary turn of events, the country's prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, after consultation with the Vatican, has issued an emergency decree stating that food and water cannot be suspended for any patient depending upon them, reversing the earlier court ruling. On issuing the emergency decree, Berlusconi declared: "This is murder. I would be failing to rescue her. I'm not a Pontius Pilate." Justifying his campaign to save Englaro's life, the prime minister added that, physically at least, she was "in the condition to have babies", ...
With her informed consent? MASSIVE silence.
And rightwing lunatics like Blob Blogging Wingnut deny that fundamentalist Catholics don't view women as potential human incubators.
