(The Blaze) — The parents of Charlie Gard are back in court this week, continuing the struggle to free their baby from captivity and bring him to the U.S. for treatment.
As you hopefully are aware by now, Connie Yates and Chris Gard have been fighting with courts and hospitals in the U.K. for the right to seek medical care for their sick baby. So far, European death panels have determined that Charlie must die, because, in their estimation, his life is no longer worth living. His parents are not allowed to bring him elsewhere for treatment, nor are they even permitted to bring their child home to die in their arms. He is being held as a condemned prisoner in a state funded hospital, with his mother and father permitted only visiting hours to come and weep over the child they are not allowed to save.
But Connie and Chris have been granted one last chance in court to prove the validity of the treatment they hope to obtain for Charlie in the United States. Any sane and decent person would say that it doesn’t matter if some judge or some collection of doctors in London think the treatment will be ineffective. It’s the only chance Charlie has, and his parents have the right to give it a shot. But it doesn’t work that way because the laws in Europe are neither sane nor decent. Charlie had the misfortune of being born into a system of socialized medicine, where government officials get to decide who is worth saving and who must die on the altar of resource efficiency.
