Alfie Evans is dead. His brave and loving parents have all my sympathy.
As this is not the UK, where “malicious communication” is now an offence requiring police investigation, let us engage in a little casual thought-crime and discuss the courts, who knew what was in Alfie’s “best interests” so much better than those very same brave and loving parents.
Come, take a look into the abyss.
In this article from Daily Star, a doctor is quoted as saying that “Sometimes, the sad fact is that parents do not know what is best for their child.” The journalist continues: “Doctors believe it’s in the boy’s best interests to end his life support rather than be taken to Italy to continue treatment.”
Backstory: Italy had provided Italian citizenship to the boy, and an airlift to convey him to the Bambino Gesù hospital in Rome. His parents, Thom and Kate, had wanted to take the offer up rather than stay in Britain and see their son’s life support switched off, but were prevented by the British courts.
Here’s Fox News: “Under British law, courts often intervene when parents and doctors disagree over the treatment of a child, who’s [sic] rights often take precedent over the parent’s right to decide what’s best.”
And here’s an article from a Guardian journalist who, after criticising Alfie’s supporters as vultures who exploited his situation to advance their own loathsome agenda of life and liberty, writes this beautiful line: “For in British law, what matters is what is in the best interest of the child, not of the parents.”
How clever, to frame “the child’s best interests” as something different, and potentially opposed, to his parents’ right to choose life and to pursue all available avenues. The child’s best interests – as decided by unquestionable decision-makers, who are not his parents.
Whatever the courts did, it was all for the good of Alfie Evans. His parents just couldn’t see that what he needed most was an early death by neglect.
This internet anon summed it up neatly in a comment on a Redstate article:
I agree. Terrible as the ‘death panel’ may be, I would rather have my child sentenced to death on the open admission of insufficient funding than on the sickly-sweet assertion of compassion and concern for the child’s “best interests”. At least the former allows the option of outside fund-raising – or a helicopter trip to Italy. But how can you escape the meddling of people who claim that they’re doing it, not for their own good, but for yours?
C.S. Lewis wrote this:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
This is Justice Anthony Hayden, who ordered that Alfie Evans’ life support be switched off, and subsequently ruled out the trip to Italy for medical care. Did he act sincerely, with good intentions? It’s entirely possible. But the approval of his own conscience doesn’t change the actual content of his actions, nor their effect on others.
The twisting of words continues. This article reports on another NHS doctor who came out in support of the courts’ decision, saying that what was happening to Alfie – the denial of food, water and life support – was “not the killing of a child – this is redirecting care to make them more comfortable.”
What do words mean any more? If what happened to Alfie Evans is “compassion”, then give me “heartlessness.” If that is “light”, then give me “darkness”. If that is “good”, then give me “evil.” If that is what you call “love”, then “hate” me.
Give me an honest tyrant over the meddling of the nanny-state who will kill your child by neglect without doing you the courtesy of looking you in the eye. They’ll fudge their language to hide what they’re doing, as they claim to know better than you do what is best for your baby. And as they disconnect his life support and withhold water and food.
Tragedies happen. Sometimes sick children die. Sometimes that is unavoidable. But that the courts denied the parents of their right to fight for their own child’s survival, and that they did so under the mantle of disinterested concern, that is senseless evil.
Speak the truth and shake this world built on lies.
It’s your XYZ.