Once again, the U.K. has chosen to intervene in a serious health crisis involving ill toddler Alfie Evans and his parents, grossly violating their parental rights.
In a scene that looks like a flashback to last summer and the tragic case of Charlie Gard, 23 month-old Evans has been at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, dying of a degenerative neurological condition for many months. The High Court ruled in February the hospital could stop providing life support for Alfie against the wishes of his parents, Tom Evans and Kate James, and they have since lost a series of legal challenges challenging the decision.
On Monday evening, Alfie’s life support was turned off, against his parents wishes. Miraculously, as of this writing, Alfie continues to breathe on his own, surviving many hours longer than predicted, though his long-term prognosis remains grim.
On Good Morning Britain on Tuesday morning, Alfie’s father Tom Evans, confirmed that Alfie is still fighting for his life. “Because he’s been doing it for nine hours totally unexpected, the doctors are gobsmacked and I do believe he will need some form of life-support in the next couple of hours and I think he ought to be respected and given that,” he said. Tom then wrote on Facebook: “I fought hard in court for my son because I know what’s right!! And look where we are now my son is still ALIVE AFTER OVER 10 horrendous scary heartbreaking hours.”
Help has come in the form of neighbors in Italy, who have granted Alfie citizenship. Officials offered to take him to a hospital there, but the Guardian reports that the Evans family lost their legal challenge in what a judge says is the “final chapter in the case of this extraordinary little boy.”
While Alfie has been in a “semi-vegetative state” for more than a year, his parents have been battling for his life via the U.K.’s court system, lobbying for him to continue to receive life support, despite doctors’ arguing that it was in Alfie’s best interest to stop artificial ventilation.
Just like Gard, through a series of petitions and hearings, Alfie’s parents were denied the ability to have a say in his healthcare, especially if it contradicted with what Alfie’s doctors’ ordered.
Regardless of what happens to Alfie, it’s important that America take note of the U.K.’s grievous trampling of parental rights, bolstered no doubt by their socialized medical system, which is the very type of medical care heralded by most Democrats in office now.
In an email, Catherine Glenn Foster, the president of Americans United for Life, the legal arm of the pro-life movement, who was overseas with Charlie Gard last summer told me, “Americans United for Life urges High Court Justice Hayden to release Liverpool’s Alfie Evans back into the care of his parents, who seek only to continue treatment and life-affirming care for their little boy. Alfie has shown remarkable progress – surviving off of life support overnight Monday – and has the best and brightest doctors in Rome ready to treat him. The world watched the devastation Charlie Gard’s family suffered when stripped of their parental right to act in the best interest of their child, and we cannot allow history to repeat itself with little Alfie Evans.”
The real conflict in this grim situation with Alfie Evans is the same as it was for Charlie Gard: In both cases now, U.K. hospitals, doctors, and the court system not only believe they know what is best for a child, but to actually act on that opinion, even if it stands in direct contrast to parental wishes, violating any semblance of parental rights. Over the last few years, and especially this year, the U.K.’s socialized medical system has become increasingly aggressive, to the point of being despotic — outflanking parents, with the help of the court system, to determine the course of a child’s life, and if and how he dies.
Like Gard, Alfie’s case is a right-to-life case wrapped in the nightmare of what happens when socialized medicine meets parental rights and colludes with a court system which deems itself to be an authoritarian arm of the government.
Nicole Russell is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist in Washington, D.C., who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota. She was the 2010 recipient of the American Spectator’s Young Journalist Award.
