Over the weekend, I wrote about Indi Gregory, an eight-month-old baby at the center of a high-profile legal battle between her parents and Britain’s National Health Service. Sadly, Indi has since died after her life support was withdrawn by court order, against her parents’ wishes.
As I wrote in my piece, Indi’s illness was terminal, and her doctors had good reason to believe they had reached the limits of what was medically achievable. Nevertheless, I agree with the Catechism of the Catholic Church (section 2278), which states:
Discontinuing medical procedures that are burdensome, dangerous, or disproportionate to the expected outcome can be legitimate; it is the refusal of ‘over-zealous’ treatment. Here one does not will to cause death; one’s inability to impede it is merely accepted. The decisions should be made by the patient if he is competent and able, or, if not, by those legally entitled to act for the patient, whose reasonable will and legitimate interests must always be respected. [Emphasis added.]
The issue here was not the discontinuation of life-support measures, which appears legitimate under the circumstances. The issue was that the “reasonable will” and “legitimate interests” of Indi’s parents, who were “legally entitled to act” for her, were callously disregarded. They wished to leave no stone unturned in taking their daughter to a hospital in Italy that was ready and willing to receive her, at no expense to the NHS.
That Indi’s parents were prevented from taking their daughter elsewhere is deeply cruel and reinforces a dangerous precedent. If the courts can intervene to usurp parental rights in these kinds of end-of-life cases, it is conceivable that in the future, they may do so when a patient’s doctors prefer euthanasia.