Widow of Italian right-to-die protagonist turns herself in
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The widow of an Italian man who became a protagonist in Italy's euthanasia debate turned herself into police on Friday after bringing another terminally ill man to Switzerland to die.
Mina Welby told reporters outside the Tuscan police station that Davide Trentini had administered a fatal IV drip himself on Thursday in Switzerland after doctors there determined he was a suitable candidate for assisted suicide. Trentini, 53, had suffered for nearly two decades from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the neurodegenerative disease better known as Lou Gehrig's disease, and said the pain had become too unbearable to go on.
Euthanasia is illegal in overwhelmingly Roman Catholic Italy, and Trentini's announced trip to Switzerland had reignited the long-running debate that flared in 2006 when Welby's husband, Piergiorgio Welby, chose to die. A doctor removed his respirator after he became unable to eat, speak or breathe on his own due to muscular dystrophy. The case drew international attention after the Catholic Church refused Welby a church funeral.
