This past week, a legal battle over parental rights between two parents and the state-run health care raged on in the United Kingdom.
The central figure was baby Alfie Evans, suffering from a disease that doctors have not been able to identify. Alfie's parents have been fighting for months to move their son to a different location. Despite this, the high courts have ruled that Aflie and his parents, Tom and Kate, must stay in Alder Hey hospital essentially until their child dies.
The central debate here is simply who decides what is best for a child: the State or the parents of that child.
The answer is not difficult and if you have trouble deciding what you think is right, I feel sorry for you and your warped view of government's role and personal rights.
The main legal battle revolved around trying to fly Alfie to Italy for possible treatment, although a cure of any sort was still very unlikely due to how degenerative his unknown condition was. However, as the article above points out, this was entirely against the parent's wishes.
The argument for forcing Alfie to die in Alder Hey is that further treatment may have been futile due to his unknown condition. Much of his brain is gone and that is medically irreversible.
The main argument I saw for forcing Alfie's parents to watch him die in Alder Hey Hospital was “oh well he’s going to die anyway” and even if that is true it does not matter in the slightest. This case is about the rights of parents to do whatever they feel is right for their child, even if the state disagrees.
What kind of care he was offered does not matter and all other facts aside, this case is about parental rights. This child does not belong to the United Kingdom and neither did Charlie Gard, but that is exactly what the United Kingdom thinks.
This article from the Babylon Bee, a satirical site like The Onion, almost felt real reading it during the past week.
The basic idea that the state always knows what is right for a family is absolutely asinine and should not even be entertained. Cases like this are disturbing and remind us of the dangers of handing healthcare over to the state as many United States politicians have recently suggested.
The idea that hospitals and doctors always know what is right is inherently stupid and should not be how anyone operates.
As a child, my parents had to force themselves into doctor’s offices to figure out why I weighed 35 pounds as a 7-year-old; we endured countless tests and forced medical “experts” to keep testing until we got answers. The idea that parents do not know or should not be able to do what they think is best is absurd.
In relation to Alfie, the doctors themselves claimed that he would survive for at most a few breaths once his life support was withdrawn. Despite their expert analysis, as of this writing, Alfie has been fighting and breathing on his own for significantly more than 24 hours.
What happened to Alfie Evans and his family is something I never want to see anywhere but especially not in the United States.
The state does not own your child, despite this, we have now seen the United Kingdom trap two families in their hospitals and try to kill an infant.
Last July the U.K. ruled against letting Charlie Gard, an infant with a rare genetic condition, receive possible treatment in the United States. This case was even more grotesque and inhumane due to the fact that there were a plan and a treatment being offered. Yet, Charlie's parents were forced to watch their child die as his life support was withdrawn and he was not released into their custody.
These two cases are so absurdly authoritarian it is honestly hard to wrap my head around. How can any person think that the parents of a child do not have the right to decide what is best for their child? Two sets of parents that were simply trying to do what they thought they needed to do and the state-run healthcare was able to trap them in a hospital and force them to watch their child die.
There is no telling if the experimental treatment being offered to the Gard family would have worked, it had not even been FDA approved yet. But the family was out of options. Instead of letting them try one last-ditch effort, the NHS decided it was best to for the child to die. For what? How can this be justified? It is mind-boggling to me that something like this can happen in a developed country and have it end simply in the parents going home and the leaders just shrugging their shoulders as if that is just how things should be.
Handing over healthcare to the state is inherently evil, the United Kingdom has proven this again. The United States healthcare system has many faults, but if a family wanted to go to another country for an experimental country and a hospital tried to keep that family and force their child to die, there would be an outrage and a plethora of lawsuits.
This is not meant to exploit this tragedy and public case, but the fact that this is happening anywhere in the world is greatly disturbing and giving the state that much power is something that has been suggested by actual elected officials in the United States; something I will always argue against.
The parents of Alfie Evans and Charlie Gard should have grounds to sue their government, instead, they have lost legal battles as well as the Gard's losing their son in a manner that should be greatly disturbing to anyone that is not a sociopath.
