ROME — For more than a year, media reports kept Italians up to date on the travails of a 44-year-old man known only as “Mario” as he sought to end his life through physician-assisted suicide. Paralyzed 12 years ago in a traffic accident, “Mario” faced a series of legal, bureaucratic and financial hurdles in his pursuit of death.
On Thursday, “Mario,” identified for the first time by his real name, Federico Carboni, ended his life, becoming Italy’s first legal assisted suicide, in his home in the port town of Senigallia.
Carboni, an unmarried truck driver, was surrounded by his family, friends and people who had helped him to achieve his goal, including officials with the Luca Coscioni Association, a right-to-die advocacy group that assisted Carboni during the past 18 months and announced his death.
Marco Cappato, treasurer of the Coscioni association, said that when Carboni first contacted him two years ago, he had been planning to go to Switzerland to end his life. Instead, he decided to remain in Italy. “These two years of stubbornness and determination” allowed Carboni to be proud to be “the first person in Italy to have obtained medical assistance for a voluntary death,” Cappato said.
In a landmark ruling in 2019, Italy’s Constitutional Court said that assisted suicide could not be considered a crime as long as certain conditions were met.
Even with that precedent, Carboni struggled to get access to physician-assisted suicide. He was forced to repeatedly challenge in court health officials where he lived, so that he could be visited by doctors and by members of the regional ethics committee who could verify the state of his heath and mind and eventually sign off his plan, which adhered to the Constitutional Court ruling.
In a farewell letter, Carboni told his family and friends not to be sad. With the Coscioni association, “we have created a judicial milestone and a piece of history in our country, and I am proud and honored to have stood by your side,” he wrote.
Don’t cry, he added. “Now I am finally free to fly wherever I want.”
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