The baby Charlie Gard, the subject of a controversial legal battle, was taken off of life support and died.
LifeSite has an informative article, quoted after the jump, on Charlie’s death and his parents’ efforts to keep him alive despite the hospital’s wishes.
The article includes some more details about the hospital’s overbearing behavior–such as denying the parents’ last request that they be allowed to take him home to die and keeping out clergy who wanted to pray with the family.
The most important detail given in the story is that Charlie had been baptized.
From Claire Chretien, Baby Charlie Gard has died | News | LifeSite:
Charlie Gard, the 11-month-old with a rare disease who captured the world’s attention, died today after he was removed from his ventilator. . . .
Charlie had a rare mitochondrial disease. His parents, Chris Gard and Connie Yates, raised more than $1.5 million to transfer him to the U.S. for experimental treatment. But Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH), where he was being treated, thought Charlie’s life support should be pulled against his parents’ wishes.
For months, the hospital argued in court against the rights of Charlie’s parents to decide their son’s course of care. English and European courts ruled that the hospital could block his parents’ wishes and pull Charlie’s life support.
Then, in what seemed like a miraculous second chance for Charlie, the hospital requested the court hear “fresh evidence” in the case.
There had been mounting public pressure on the hospital to release Charlie to another doctor. Pope Francis and President Trump both publicly expressed their support of the Gards. Trump said he’d be “delighted” to help Charlie. Chris and Connie delivered more than 350,000 pro-Charlie signatures on a petition to the hospital. Members of European Parliament had demanded Charlie be allowed to receive care.
At the request of the court, Dr. Michio Hirano, an American specialist, flew to England to examine Charlie. But Hirano examined Charlie a few months too late, when his muscles were too significantly deteriorated for treatment to help.
Had Charlie been allowed to be examined and treated by a doctor sooner, his parents said, he would “have had the potential to be a normal, healthy little boy.”
They ended their legal battle on July 24 and lamented “a whole lot of wasted time” that could have been used to help Charlie before his muscles further deteriorated.
Then, GOSH refused to accommodate Chris and Connie’s final wish that they be allowed to bring Charlie home to die. On July 27, Mr. Justice Francis, the judge presiding over the case, decided Charlie would be sent to a hospice to die. . . .
The hospital tried to block clergy from visiting Charlie to pray with him and criticized “a world where only parents speak and decide for [their] children.” The hospital even argued that keeping Charlie alive offered him no “benefit” and would just continue his “condition of existence.”
It also wouldn’t transfer him to a Vatican hospital that offered to treat Charlie.
Charlie was baptized. His parents have said they hope to start a foundation to ensure this never happens again.
[Keep reading. . .]
Photograph of the baptism of an unidentified child from Pixabay, CC0, Public Domain
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