End of life in Umbria: committee approves 13 amendments, opposition walks out of the chamber

After Veneto, which we reported on on September 3, the regional path on end of life shifts to Umbria. On September 9, 2026, the Third Committee of the Umbrian legislative assembly approved 13 amendments to the popular initiative bill titled “Procedures and timelines for regional healthcare assistance for medically assisted suicide,” presented at the session by chairman Luca Simonetti (ANSA Umbria).

The first amendment concerns the title of the act, which becomes “Provisions for regional healthcare assistance for voluntary medically assisted death through self-administration of a lethal drug.” The other twelve amendments have a declared technical function: to align the text with the ruling in which the Constitutional Court decided on the Tuscan law, removing from the Umbrian text the parts already declared unlawful. The result is a proposal shorter than the one filed by the promoters of the popular initiative.

The process was not unanimous in its method. Minority committee members — center-right and civic representatives — walked out of the session because their request to hold hearings was not accepted (ANSA Umbria). They are therefore absent from the record of the vote, which took place without them.

The text has not yet reached the floor. The Committee must still hold a vote on the entire act, and only after that step will the act possibly be forwarded to the Assembly; the timeline indicated is by September. This is a distinction worth keeping in mind: the approved amendments rewrite a proposal that, as a proposal, must still pass the overall review of the body that voted on them.

Two other pieces are moving around Umbria. On September 8, 2026, the Luca Coscioni Association asked the Molise Region to conclude examination of the proposal filed on April 1, 2025, and signed by ten majority and opposition council members. “In Molise the proposal has already been filed and discussion has begun,” said the association’s treasurer Marco Cappato (TermoliOnLine). The source is the promoting association’s statement: it should be read as the position of the party that filed the text.

The second piece corrects a possible reading of our September 4 article on the Veneto law. As of September 7, 2026, that law had not yet been published: according to Linkiesta, the sixty-day period within which the government can challenge it before the Constitutional Court has therefore not yet begun to run. In other words, the challenge window is not closed: it is not yet open. This is information coming from a single source, a piece of journalistic analysis, and the editorial staff has not consulted official records on the publication of the law.

The picture documented by today’s sources is one of three regional assemblies at different stages: a law approved and awaiting publication in Veneto, a proposal amended in committee in Umbria, and an open review in Molise at the request of the promoters. The next verifiable act is the vote of the Umbrian Third Committee on the entire text.