Just over a year after the death of Laura Santi, a journalist from Perugia suffering from multiple sclerosis, Umbria has approved a law on medically assisted suicide. And his name, his story and his words permeated the entire discussion in the Regional Council.
The Umbrian Legislative Assembly has in fact approved, with 11 votes in favour, 6 against and 3 abstentions, the popular initiative law proposal supported by the Luca Coscioni association and 4,801 citizens.
Umbria thus becomes the fifth Italian region, after Tuscany, Sardinia, Emilia-Romagna and Veneto, to intervene with regional provisions on the end of life, albeit with different legal instruments. At the center, a question that concerns medicine, politics and above all people: who should be able to decide how to face the end of one’s life when an irreversible disease causes suffering considered intolerable?
Who was Laura Santi
Laura Santi was a journalist, a woman who lived with a severe form of multiple sclerosis and who had chosen to publicly talk about her condition, her daily difficulties and her request to be able to decide on her end of life. On 21 July 2025 she died in her home in Perugia, resorting to medically assisted suicide, after a long process to obtain recognition of the conditions established by constitutional jurisprudence.
His battle asked that other people, in the same conditions, not have to face long and uncertain journeys to have their request examined.
During the session, councilor Fabrizio Ricci of Alleanza Verdi e Sinistra, rapporteur of the proposal, recalled one of the sentences left by the journalist:
Any life remains worth living even in the most extreme conditions, but we are the ones who have to choose.
What does the new Umbrian law on assisted suicide provide?
The provision, entitled Provisions for regional healthcare assistance for voluntary medically assisted death through self-administration of a lethal drug, intervenes above all on the organization of healthcare procedures, with the aim of making the path clearer for people who request access to medically assisted suicide, avoiding that the verification of the requirements depends on uncertain or different procedures between healthcare facilities.
The text provides that each local health authority establishes a permanent multidisciplinary commission, responsible for verifying the conditions necessary for access to the procedure.
Among the most significant elements of the law, modified during the examination in the Assembly, are:
Furthermore, the reference to the terminal phase of life was eliminated, which could have introduced an additional condition compared to the requirements already identified by the Constitutional Court.
Who can access medically assisted suicide in Italy?
It is necessary to remember that in Italy, aiding suicide is generally punished by article 580 of the Criminal Code. However, sentence 242 of 2019 of the Constitutional Court, pronounced following the affair of DJ Fabo and Marco Cappato, identified specific conditions in which assisting suicide is not punishable.
These are people who:
The verification of the conditions must be carried out by the National Health Service, following the opinion of the competent ethics committee. The framework was subsequently clarified by constitutional jurisprudence.
It is also important to distinguish medically assisted suicide from euthanasia: in the first case it is the person concerned who self-administers the drug, while in the second the administration is carried out by another subject.
The Umbrian law concerns the first case and does not introduce the legalization of euthanasia.
