‘Don’t kill me’: Empty wheelchairs dramatize campaign against assisted suicide in Italy

Rome, Italy, Nov 5, 2025 / 17:03 pm (CNA).

The Piazza del Popolo (People’s Square), one of Rome’s most iconic and monumental spaces, became the stage on Nov. 4 for a powerful campaign against a bill currently under consideration in the Italian Senate to decriminalize assisted suicide. 

Two hundred empty wheelchairs with a rose-colored balloon floating above each one were arranged in meticulously ordered rows in the center of the Italian capital’s expansive urban space by the pro-life ProVita & Famiglia association as part of a flash mob with a direct and unsettling message: “Non mi uccidere” (“Don’t kill me”).

The initiative aimed to denounce what the organization considers a “drift toward assisted suicide” in Italy.

Legislative background

Currently in Italy, anyone who “causes the death of a man with his consent” is punishable by six to 15 years in prison, according to Article 579 of the penal code.

However, in 2019 the country’s constitutional court partially modified this legislation, ruling that no one will be punished for killing “a patient who is kept alive by life-support treatments and suffers from an irreversible condition.”

This ruling came after the trial and subsequent acquittal of Marco Cappato, who was tried for accompanying producer Fabiano Antoniani, better known as DJ Fabo, to Switzerland to obtain assisted suicide in 2017. Antoniani had become quadriplegic and blind after an accident in 2014. 

Three years later, in 2022, Italy’s lower house passed a bill regulating a patient’s right to request medical assistance in dying based on certain conditions, such as being of legal age or suffering from an irreversible illness.

The legislation was then sent to the Senate, which has been debating the proposal for three years. The ProVita & Famiglia campaign aims to prevent its final passage.

According to the organizers, the 200 empty wheelchairs represent the sick, disabled, elderly, and vulnerable people who, in the association’s words, “are asking Parliament for more care, more rights, more dignity but are instead faced with cynical shortcuts to death.” 

“Only 33% of those entitled to palliative care” have access to it, according to data compiled by the organization, “with some Italian regions where coverage drops to as low as 4%-5%.” This figure leaves thousands of families without health care assistance.

Drifting toward assisted suicide

Italy has begun a “drift toward assisted suicide that could lead to a veritable state-sanctioned massacre of the sick, the elderly living alone, the depressed, and people with disabilities,” ProVita & Famiglia stated in a press release. 

“Any national law in this direction would only accentuate the process, reinforcing in public opinion the idea that the state can offer suicide as just another social and health care service,” the group warned.

Massimo Gandolfini, leader of the Family Day movement, also joined the Nov. 4 demonstration, reiterating his rejection of “any form of medically assisted dying.” In his address, he warned that “the experience of the 13 countries that have legalized it is devastating: From a few initial cases, it has grown to thousands every year, including young people with depression.”

Among the participants in the event was Emanuel Cosmin Stoica, a writer, activist, and disabled person. 

“In a moment of suffering,” he said, “I myself might think about death, but it is precisely then that society must help people live and not offer suicide as an escape from pain.” Instead, “the state must invest in assistance, psychological support, inclusion, and social networks that leave no one alone.”

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

Source: https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/267625/dont-kill-me-empty-wheelchairs-dramatize-campaign-against-assisted-suicide-in-italy