The days leading up to Christmas in Italy were characterised by a debate, in the media, on whether a woman who has been in an irreversible coma for almost 17 years should be allowed the right to die.

Eluana Englaro has been in a vegetative state since a car accident in 1992, when she was still 21 years old. Her father Beppino has been petitioning the courts for the past years, asking that her food and hydration tube be removed and that she be dehydrated to death. In November, the highest appeals court of Italy upheld a lower court ruling granting her father’s petition.

Pro-life Italian organisations lodged an appeal with the European Court of Human Rights, which however turned it down as inadmissible since the organisations had no direct link with the woman.

Yet the debate in Italy goes on, with Catholic politicians and the Vatican claiming that the court’s ruling would in effect mean the authorisation of euthanasia, while libertarians describe it as a victory for individual freedom.

The fact remains that the woman’s family is still to find a clinic that is willing to remove Eluana’s feeding tube. Eluana, now 38, is being taken care of at the Beato Luigi Talamoni clinic in Lecco, a town in the Lombardy region. A clinic in Udine offered its services but backed down after guidelines issued by the Italian government stated that the removal of feeding tubes from patients in a vegetative state was illegal.

This situation reminds many of the Terri Schiavo case, which gripped American and world headlines a few years ago. In that case, after a long legal battle, the feeding tube of the 41- year-old Terri, who had been in a vegetative state for 15 years, was removed and she died on 31 March, 2005.

When the media highlights sad stories such as those of Terri and Eluana, there is always a split between people who believe that nature should take its course and that nobody has the right to terminate one’s life or another person’s life, and others who sustain that once there is no chance that people lying in irreversible situations could recover they have a right to die with dignity.

The controversy is invariably widened to cover other aspects of such situations. Should people with a terminal illness be allowed to decide their own fate? Should they be allowed to refuse treatment? Should they be assisted in ending their own life? Is society being ungenerous if it prohibits such assistance to people who are in great pain and misery and would want to end their own life? If these terminally-ill people are not in a position to decide should their families be allowed to do so?

The pro-life groups would answer no to all those questions, while those who insist that everyone should have the right to do what he or she likes with one’s life will answer yes.

In a Catholic country like Malta, euthanasia has not been widely discussed, but today many people tend to not follow the teachings of the Church on controversial subjects and have an opinion which is opposite to what the Church teaches.

Just as much as there are people who are in favour of divorce and also abortion, on which the Church is adamantly and clearly against, there are others who believe that people should have the right to end their life if they are in an irreversible situation and when any medical treatment would only serve to prolong what would have become a miserable life.

Eluana is still alive just because a feeding tube allows her to survive. But what kind of life is she living?