Op-Ed: Italy: Master of His Own Fate

January 4, 2007

Welby, you may recall, was the terminally ill Italian poet who pleaded eloquently with Italy’s president and petitioned the courts to let doctors remove him from a respirator so he could die. Physician-assisted suicide — which is what a lot of people, including the church, believe unhooking Welby amounted to — is a crime punishable by up to 15 years in prison in the heavily Catholic country. (Wired)