Stephen Green at Instapundit highlighted this story from overseas that should terrify parents in the U.S.
The European Court of Human Rights rejected a desperate plea by parents of an infant with a rare genetic condition to prevent a hospital from terminating life support on their child.
The parents want to take the child to America to undergo an experimental therapy. But the hospital wants the infant to “die with dignity” and refuses to allow it.
Chris Gard, 32, and Connie Yates, 31, wanted to take their 10-month-old son – who suffers from a rare genetic condition and has brain damage – to the US to undergo a therapy trial.
Doctors at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London, where Charlie is being cared for, said they wanted him to be able to ‘die with dignity’.
But the couple, from Bedfont, west London, raised almost £1.4million so they could take their son to America but a series of courts ruled in favour of the British doctors.
It comes after specialists at Great Ormond Street said therapy in the US is experimental and will not help and added that life support should stop.
And after losing legal battles in the UK, Charlie’s parents were hoping judges in Strasbourg, France, would come to their aid.
But on Tuesday afternoon, the ECHR rejected a last-ditch plea and their ‘final’ decision means the baby’s life support machine will be switched off.
The ECHR announced the application to the court by the parents was ‘inadmissible’ and added that their decision was ‘final’.
Mr Gard and Miss Yates have yet to comment on today’s decision, however their Twitter account ‘Charlie’s fight’, retweeted a number of messages.
One said: ‘The #CharlieGard case is terrible. Shame on the UK judges allowing him to die, shameful, terrible decision.’
Another message the account retweeted read: ‘Very evil people….. Sentencing a child to death! What an anti-child pagan society we are. I pray for #CharlieGard!’
Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children today said their thoughts are with Charlie’s parents and said the decision ‘marks the end of a difficult process’.
Their statement read: ‘Our thoughts are with Charlie’s parents on receipt of this news that we know will be very distressing for them.
Whenever social conservatives talk about an ethical “slippery slope,” humanists invariably dismiss these concerns as uninformed or “hysteria.” The poster child for this debate was the institution of the Groningen Protocols back in 2004. The Dutch doctors who came up with these protocols believed they were acting humanely — ending the lives of newborns with terminal or painful diseases. At the time, there were warnings that eventually these euthanasia rules would trump even the wishes of parents. That is exactly what we have in Europe today.
So much for the “hysterical” slippery slope.
Rarely do we get such a clear look at the future. Adopting a European-style social democratic model for health care, by its very nature, allows the state to make decisions about life and death about our children or our aging parents. The state is only acting for the “greater good,” which overrides individual preferences in all cases.
As bad as our health care system is for some people, it is far preferable to the monstrously efficient and uncaring system to which Charlie’s parents have fallen victim.
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