Are you ready? I have a difficult question for you. What basic liberties cannot, under any circumstances, be taken away from us? Just think about it. Are you stumped? I didn't think so. Everyone has seen the depressing (though accurate) videos of Americans struggling to recall elementary facts concerning the history of their country, but, when it comes to that very important question, the answer is the same across the board: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Same phrasing, same order, said without pause. Those words that Thomas Jefferson wrote over two centuries ago are no longer just apart of arguably one of the most important documents in all of history (right up there with the Constitution and It by Alexa Chung). They are infused into the American DNA. If nothing else, we believe that we are guaranteed the opportunity to live, to be free, and to be happy. Better yet, we don't believe that these three rights are reserved solely for Americans, but for humanity as a whole. Though our motto might be "E Pluribus Unum," our creed is "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," and we desire to see it universally applied.

The international community experienced an attack on the very first and most basic of these liberties: the right to life. Charlie Gard, an 11-month-old baby with a rare genetic condition known as mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome, was effectually sentenced to death by both the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom and the European Court of Human Rights. Charlie's doctors declared that the baby would die of his seemingly incurable condition, and deemed that the most dignified way of proceeding would be to take him off of life support. His parents, understandably, refused to accept this outcome and requested that Charlie be released into their care so that they could pursue experimental nucleoside bypass therapy, an oral treatment with marked success, in the United States. That's when the unthinkable happened: their request was refused. Thus began the heart-wrenching legal battle that has gained international attention and widespread criticism. The obvious problem? The hospital assumed the role of Charlie's parents and decided what was best for their son. The courts upheld their decision based on international law ratified by every country in the U.N. (except the U.S.) at the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which allowed them to isolate the current well-being of the child and his slim chance of medical improvement as the basis for the justification of the termination of his life without factoring in the wishes of his parents, who refused to give up on their son.

Realistically, the chances of Charlie's condition improving weren't slim; they were microscopic. However, it doesn't take a statistician to see that the court's ruling set Charlie's chances of survival at zero percent. The impartial, unbiased courts made a ruling in a case where partiality and bias are all-important. Those two things that the court ignored in order to arrive at an unprejudiced decision stem from love, which is typically accompanied by its crucial counterpart hope. In seemingly futile undertakings, hope is generally the only factor that effectively prompts action or leads to success. Despite a grueling legal battle that held the dimmest light at the end of a very dark tunnel, a physician examined Charlie and determined that his brain damage had progressed beyond any hope of repair, even with the experimental treatment. The appeals of Dr. Michio Hirano, an American physician who advocated for experimental treatment, fell on deaf ears, as the nucleoside bypass therapy wouldn't repair the brain damage Charlie had already sustained. The prolonged legal battle only allowed more damage to be done. Charlie's parents had to concede to shut off his ventilator. The infant ran out of time, and, on July 28th, his brief life was allowed to end by those charged with saving it.

The international community finds itself split by the decision. Charlie has supporters among world leaders like Pope Francis and President Trump, and the U.S. Congress even granted Charlie American citizenship before his parents succumbed to the court-endorsed decision of ending Charlie's life. But the courts have science and statistics, two contenders with cerebral weight, though two contenders who often fail in the face of human will and the determination to succeed. The world will never know if the experimental treatment would have worked. It is left to debate whether the case of Charlie Gard was an unfortunate but justified use of medical ethics or a tragedy of an overreaching, emotionally-antiseptic court system.

When I first heard about Charlie, I was admittedly shocked. How could something like this be allowed to occur in a "civilized" society? When did fighting to live suddenly become "inhumane"? And how did the medical field and, more frighteningly, the government usurp the role of the parent? I understand that the court believed they were ruling in Charlie's, not his parents', best interest, but would experimental treatment have done any harm? Charlie's brain damage was so progressed that he wasn't in any pain, and just this month scientists were able to reverse severe brain damage in a two-year-old girl who's brain had been deprived of oxygen for two hours. If the seemingly impossible was accomplished for a girl who has finally recovered the ability to eat and speak, wasn't it at least worth the attempt for Charlie?

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Three separate rights guaranteed to every human being from birth. What few recognize, however, is that these three basic rights walk hand-in-hand; they are interdependent. A threat to one is a threat to all three. In an effort to be "humane," the courts cast aside Charlie's universal and inalienable rights. How did we get to this point? When did "dignity" supersede the determination to live? And when did parents lose the right to fight for their own child's life? Oh brave new world, that has such people in it...