UNITED KINGDOM
(Brussels) “The European Court for Human Rights should defend individuals from the State’s interfering”, and instead “it abstains from doing anything, based on an argument that is more political than legal”. Antoine Renard, president of Fafce, the Federation of Catholic Family Associations in Europe, comments with SIR on the ruling issued by the Court of Strasbourg that, upholding the British judges’ decisions, led to the decision to turn off the life-support machine that little Charlie’s life has been clinging to till now. “Charlie Gard is not a mere legal case, he is a seriously ill 10-month-old child”, Renard insists. “The legal authorities removed the parents’ authority over the child, so now they cannot even make him die in peace at home with them”. Faced with “such a sequence of injustices and violence, we are speechless. The doctors at the Great Ormond Street Hospital decided to put down this life. But we know that science, even the most advanced one, does not have an answer for everything”. The president of Fafce concludes: “May what happens today be a warning to the lawmakers, one cannot be ambiguous about the end of life”.
