From Terri Schiavo to Charlie Gard

Something is happening in our culture. We are learning how limited our learned men and women really are. We’re seeing a culture of death resort to courts to defeat the preciousness of each moment of life. Two prime examples of courts interfering with parental rights include Terri Schiavo and Charlie Gard.

Terri Schiavo was a Catholic woman who lived for many years in a vegetative state, and had her life ended through the removal of her feeding tube in 2005. The legal fight was over her parents’ wish that she be fed and allowed to live out her days until her natural death. Her husband went to court to remove the feeding tubes. The courts sided with the husband in a landmark decision, which was unusual as until then feeding tubes were not removed to kill a patient in a coma.

The case of Charlie Gard is one of a ten-month-old baby who has a rare genetic disorder which ends in death. He is near death. The last hope is an experimental treatment available in the U.S. The problem is Charlie Gard is in England and doctors there have determined he should receive no other treatments as his prognosis is grim. But, his parents want to take him to the U.S., and have raised money to try the new treatment. For U.S. citizens who witness capitalism every day, it seems that if the Gards want to spend their money on this treatment for their son, why would anyone stop them? It is their decision, not the doctors, or now the courts.

As for Terri Schiavo, the controversy included no living will to determine what she wanted. As well, most people consider a feeding tube a standard treatment in the sense all of us would die without food and water. Therefore, the court order marked a shift into euthanasia.

Both cases argue for parental rights, and in the Gard case, the feeling that parents might decide what is best for their child has been replaced by the state deciding. The highlight of the Gard case is the treatment may have prolonged Charlie’s life, and has had some remarkable results so far. At the very least, Charlie Gard’s participation in the clinical trial would advance treatments for other children. As Charlie will die regardless, the benefit for future children born with this rare condition may result in lives saved in the future.

U.S. medical teams use clinical trials with terminal patients to prolong life, and to advance treatments for the future sufferers of these dreaded diseases. If no one entered them, then there would never be new and groundbreaking treatments. The idea of vaccines to treat cancer or surgery on fetuses before birth were once considered risky procedures, and are now accepted treatments. No one is making anyone enter these trials.

What is going on in our society is an advancement of the culture of death. Life has been cheapened to the level that life can only be valued if society says it has “quality” to it. If society wants to take this idea of “quality of life” to the nth degree, those who may have minor defects may even be deemed better off dead quickly.

We need strong leadership. Humans have a remarkable sense about right and wrong instilled in them by their creator. We all know people like Charlie Gard and Terri Schiavo deserve better than to be forced to die with “dignity.” They need the public to fight to kept them alive until their Creator calls them home.