The Veneto Regional Council is discussing a law that aims to regulate the use of assisted suicide in the region. Assisted suicide is the procedure by which one self-administers a lethal drug under certain conditions: it is legal in Italy thanks to a 2019 Constitutional Court ruling, but a law that clearly defines when and how it should be implemented has never been passed, either at the national or local level, despite repeated calls from the Court itself. If it approves the proposal, Veneto would become the first Italian region to have a law on the so-called "end of Life”, and thus be able to guarantee what the Constitutional Court has recognized, under certain conditions, as a right. Based on the voting intentions expressed so far by Veneto councilors, the law seems to have a good chance of being passed. The requirements are as follows: the person requesting assisted suicide must be able to make free and conscious decisions, must be suffering from an irreversible pathology and source of physical or psychological suffering that he or she considers intolerable, and finally must be kept alive by "life-support treatment”, that is, artificially.
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