✣ World gripped by battle over Charlie Gard
What happened? Pope Francis and Donald Trump drew the attention of the world’s media to 11-month-old Charlie Gard by offering their support for his parents. Charlie’s parents, Connie Yates and Chris Gard, had challenged a decision by Great Ormond Street Hospital to withdraw his life support, instead wanting him to be sent for experimental treatment in the US, for which they had raised £1.3 million. But British and European courts sided with the hospital. What Catholics are saying Charles Camosy, writing for Crux, argued that the decision amounted to euthanasia of a disabled baby. (Charlie has a rare genetic disease called mitochondrial depletion syndrome which means he cannot move, see or hear.) “His vulnerable life had been determined by powerful others to be unworthy to be lived,” Camosy wrote. He noted that Charlie was unlikely to benefit from the experimental US treatment. If paid for by the state, he said, this would be a good reason to forgo it. But Charlie’s parents had raised the money themselves. Withdrawing life support is euthanasia in the form of “an omission which by intention causes death”, he wrote. But Michael Redinger, writing for America magazine, said pro-lifers had “fallen into the trap of vitalism: the prioritisation of the prolongation of human life at all costs, regardless of pain or suffering”. He said there was a consensus that “life in this state is painful for Charlie and that he is unable to comprehend or meaningfully respond to this pain”. (Although others have said it is impossible to know if Charlie is in pain.) If the harm of a treatment exceeds its potential for benefit, then it is “inhumane” to provide it, he said. The Anscombe Bioethics Centre, an Oxford-based Catholic institute, said the court judgments were flawed. They expressed opinions that could be seen as suggesting “the life of a disabled person [is] not worth living” and did not “adequately recognise” the role of the parents, the institute said. The High Court acted on the parents’ behalf “without first attempting to show that they were acting very unreasonably”.
