Laura Santi, a 50-year-old journalist from Perugia, has died at her home in the Umbrian capital after self-administering a lethal drug. She suffered from a progressive and advanced form of multiple sclerosis. Her husband, Stefano, who remained by her side throughout her final years of campaigning for end-of-life rights, was present.
The Luca Coscioni Association, for which Santi was an activist, announced her death. “After years of disease progression and a final year of ferocious deterioration in her condition, her suffering had become intolerable for her,” her husband emphasized.
The association also released Santi’s final message: “Life is worthy of being lived, if one so wishes, even to 100 years and in the fiercest conditions, but it must be us, living this extreme suffering, who decide and no one else.” She wrote, “I am about to die. You cannot understand the sense of freedom from suffering, from the daily hell I have been living. Or perhaps you can. Be at peace for me. I take smiles with me over there, I believe it is so. I take a lot of beauty that you have given me. And I beg you: remember me. Yes, I ask you this, remember me.” She urged continued activism: “And in remembering me – do not ever tire of fighting. I beg you, never resign yourselves. I know, I know you already do, but never resign yourselves. Never tire, even when the battles seem truly unwinnable.”
The Luca Coscioni Association detailed the “long and complex judicial, civil, and penal process” Santi endured to gain access to medically assisted suicide. After an initial request to her local health authority (ASL Umbria 1) three years prior, involving two formal complaints, two legal warnings, an emergency appeal, and a challenge against the health authority, she only received a complete medical report in November 2024. This report confirmed she met the requirements established by the Constitutional Court’s Ruling 242/2019. Final confirmation from the medical expert panel and the ethics committee on the pharmacological protocol and administration methods came in June 2025.
Volunteer medical and nursing personnel assisted Santi during the self-administration procedure for the assisted suicide, the Coscioni Association confirmed. Afflicted by progressive multiple sclerosis, the journalist had finally received authorization from her local health authority, ASL Umbria 1, last month following her two-and-a-half-year request and protracted legal battle.