ROME, April 3 (Xinhua) -- Italy's outgoing government has joined a Constitutional Court case on assisted suicide, a non-profit called the Luca Coscioni Association announced Tuesday.
The case brings to the fore a long-running debate in Italy over when it is morally appropriate for an individual to request an end to a life of extreme suffering.
Coscioni, a member of the Radical Party, was affected with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a neurodegenerative disease with no known cure, which gradually causes patients to become completely paralyzed, unable to walk, eat or speak.
In February this year, Italian activist Marco Cappato of the Luca Coscioni Association was acquitted in a lower court of charges of instigation to suicide for driving a well-known DJ, Fabiano Antoniani, to a Swiss clinic to obtain euthanasia in early 2017.
DJ Fabo, as he was known in Italy, had been left blind and tetraplegic after a car crash. Assisted suicide is illegal in Italy, but not in Switzerland.
However, the lower court declined to rule on a separate charge of assisted suicide, sending that part of the case against Cappato to the Constitutional Court.
The government's decision to join the case at this point means it is defending the existing law, which says helping someone to commit suicide is a crime.
In December last year, parliament gave its final approval to the so-called living will law, allowing terminal patients to refuse to be kept alive artificially if they so choose.
The living will is binding on doctors and absolves them of legal responsibility should they suspend care in such patients, according to the new law. This means it is now legal in Italy to die gradually through withdrawal of care, but not to die quickly through euthanasia, the Luca Coscioni Association said.