Parental Rights, A Matter of Life and Death

The plight of baby Charlie Gard has captured the attention of people across the world, and cast a spotlight on the issue of parental rights.

In case you have missed his story, here’s a quick overview. Charlie Gard was born August 4, 2016 with a rare and life-threatening genetic disease. Shortly after he turned two months old, he was admitted to Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH), where he has remained in intensive care ever since.

In January 2017, the doctors at GOSH decided that continued treatment was futile. But his parents disagreed. They continued to research the problem, contacting doctors all over the world.

Finding one in America who believed he could help Charlie, they started a GoFundMe page seeking the resources to get him treatment. Through the generosity of more than 83,000 people, they are now financially able to transfer Charlie’s care to America.

To this point, Charlie’s story is a remarkable but reasonably normal case of parents working to care for their child in the best way they know how. Disagreements happen every single day. Even experts can only judge to the best of their knowledge, and no one has a crystal ball.

We can respect the doctors who have been intimately involved in Charlie’s case since October, and we can respect the doctors who gave a second opinion from afar. We can also respect his parents who hope against hope, and who will leave no stone unturned in caring for the child God has entrusted to them. We can cheer the thousands of generous donors who wanted to help give Charlie a chance.

To settle disagreements, we don’t need to demonize one or the other of these parties to the case. We only need to ask one question: who has the final word? It’s not about power, but about the authority to decide. After everyone has offered their best advice, those with parental authority lovingly act according to their best judgment.

But here is where Charlie’s story turns Orwellian. Instead of accepting parental authority and releasing Charlie, wishing him all the best, the hospital used its power to seize parental authority for itself. They filed an application with the Family Division of the High Court to take Charlie off life support.

While the Great Ormond Street Hospital is the lightning rod of the case, they are not the ultimate culprit. The fact of the matter is that every judge, appeals court, and supreme court since GOSH filed the motion has likewise behaved as though Charlie’s parents have no parental authority. What is even more frightening still, they have not even bothered to consider the question!

From all this, I can only conclude that the evil is not located in the hospital, or in any of the judges handling the case, but in the entire system of laws which led to this debacle. Ever since the original application was filed on February 24, 2017, strangers have been intruding on the sacred responsibilities of Charlie’s parents with the false presumption that they have the authority to do so.

How did this happen?

We know how parental authority is given. It’s about the birds and the bees. From the moment a child is conceived in the womb, the mother and father who conceived the child are responsible to take care of it. Since they and they alone have parental responsibility, they and they alone have parental authority.

We also know how parental authority is taken away. When parents die, or if they abdicate their responsibility through neglect and abuse, the care of the child may be re-assigned to other parents. We call this “adoption” and it is such a serious matter that we have careful laws surrounding it to make sure that the natural parents have every chance to amend their ways before it happens.

But neither Christopher nor Constance, Charlie’s parents, have died. Nor have they done anything remotely deserving of being relieved of their parental authority. Yet, the net effect of Britain’s socialized medicine system, is that not only Charlie, but all British children, have been legally alienated from their natural parents.

This reality is not obvious on the surface. It is mostly hidden because British law still “allows” most parents continue to act like parents. But when push comes to shove – as it has in this case – the dragon is exposed to the light of day, and it’s ugly.

As more news comes out about Charlie’s condition, we are learning that children around the world have actually lived beautiful lives with this condition. In America, Arturito Estopinan has been fighting and surviving for six years, and Gina Mohan lived with Charlie’s condition until she was 15 years old. In Italy, nine-year old Emanuele Campostrini has been battling this condition since birth while playing chess, climbing mountains, creating art and participating in the Boy Scouts.

So why must Charlie die? This question is exposing the ugly truth of Britain’s socialized medical system, and the European Court of Human Rights behind it. They have been the objects of a world-wide outcry from the pope to the president.

 

The injustice is so obvious that neither the hospital (GOSH), nor the judges are willing to defend their decision on its merits. Rather, each in its own way is claiming that their hands are tied by “the law.”
This is what happens when injustices become so entrenched in bad laws that nobody can find a way back to sanity. After scrabbling for power and “rights,” nobody is willing to admit any responsibility. Rather, the fault lies somewhere in “the system.”

This is the inherent injustice of socialism. By denying the sanctity of marriage, life and family it robs people of their God-given authority, assigning it instead, to the state. Socialism, rather than resting upon the pillars of natural law, sets government up, not as the protector of rights, but as the arbitrary creator of rights.

The government is not God. It has the power to take life, but not the power to give it. Only God has the power to give life, and he gives it within families. Only a mother and a father can beget life, and take care of it. A government that is on the side of life, must be on the side of parents.

Notice that even in the case of adoption, parental responsibility is not given to society at large. It is always located in a particular set of parents. Families are the irreducible building block of any society. Break apart families and the whole society crumbles. Children, while gifts to the whole society, can only be realized as blessings when placed within their families.

As I am writing these words, news is coming across the wire that Charlie will not be killed today, but that he will get yet another hearing. This is good news. The world is hoping and praying that all those courts and doctors whose “hands are tied” will find some loophole that still allows them to do what is obviously right.

Nobody is asking for “society” to give Charlie life, or to foot the bill for his treatment. Rather, they are demanding that Britain, and the European Courts do what government is supposed to do in the first place: to protect the rights of his parents to love him in the best way they know how.

Meanwhile, now that we have seen where the careless stripping of natural rights can lead, it’s a good time for us all to get serious about protecting every individual right and freedom that was so carefully protected by our own constitution.

These rights are not arbitrary gifts from the government. They are the natural and inherent rights necessary for life, and the survival of any society. Charlie Gard is barely eleven months old. But even in such a short life, he has already taught the world this vital lesson.