H/T Lew Rockwell
Ingram explains that the Pope intervened.
How so? He asked that Alfie's parents and hospital officials should work together. Wow, that's some powerful intervention.
Monsignor Vincenzo Paglia, head of the Pontifical Academy of Life, a Vatican bioethics think tank, said earlier today that Alfie's parents and hospital officials should work together so his life isn't 'reduced to a legal dispute.'
Actually, he did more than that. According to Joe Herring, the Pope made some moves to grant Alfie Italian citizenship and then put a military transport helicopter on standby. This is more of an anti-state action than it is an action on behalf of Alfie and his parents. One has to ask, how does the Pope have access to military helicopters?
Italy has conferred citizenship to Alfir, and there is a medical air ambulance standing by at the request of the Pope to fly Alfie to the Vatican's Children's Hospital, Bambino Gesu, where Alfie can be treated.
The UK Sunday Express explained that
The Pope personally intervened earlier this month and has today approved of the use of an air ambulance. Earlier in the week, Italy granted Alfie citizenship.
But despite the Pope’s intervention, British Court of Appeals ruled that Alfie shall not be taken abroad for treatment.
A judge has ruled that Alfie will not be allowed to be taken abroad for treatment, but Alfie's parents are challenging the decision in the Court of Appeal.That ruling asserts the hospital’s authority over the parents'. What a horrible precedent. This means that once people are admitted, they have to get permission from the hospital before they leave, and if they don’t get it, a family member has to appeal to the courts to get the hospital to release you; otherwise, you’re, what, a fugitive?
Ingram continues.
The Italian president, Sergio Mattarella, even granted the boy Italian citizenship and still the medical profession and the courts say, no, we're sorry, we're pulling the plug. The life-support machine is being turned off. So this gets to the absolute heart of how much freedom does the individual have. How much decision-making process do the parents have or are our children now owned by the state?
Ingram answers
It's almost like they broke Alphfie's father today. Because at the beginning of the day he was saying "Come here and see how my son is a hostage of this hospital."
Oh, my God.
I shouldn't be surprised. This is standard treatment from hospitals.
He's a hostage of the National Health Service. What we are doing is not right but by the end of the day he had changed his tune and said "Everybody go back to your lives and . . . I think the hospital kind of . . . he was threatened . . . that 'you're not going to get anything from us unless you tone it down."
There was a picture yesterday of Alder Hay Hospital in Northwestern England with 20 uniformed police officers standing outside the door of the hospital to stop Little Alfie from being taken out and to stop protestors from getting in. Using the police!!! to keep the child in the hospital. How these parents have been through ever single legal process available to them and I'm guessing that now that the life-support machine has been turned off, now that there is no prospect at all of the young boy going to Italy in the end the father has accepted the inevitable. Whether he was threatened or not, I don't know. But what I do know is that when I was involved in this Charlie Gard case last year, I turned up at the hospital, in this case Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, and I was told in no uncertain terms by the PR services for the hospital that what I was doing was damaging the reputation of hospital by doing press reports outside where this little boy was dying. It's classic of the establishment closing ranks, the state being all powerful. And frankly, what is happening today, what is happening right now, is a form of state-sponsored euthenasia, and I hate it.
Glad at least that this issue is raised at the cost of blood, sweat, tears, and life of their baby son. That is some cost. It is a horrible lesson for the parents to learn as to how much power the state exercises over the citizens who fund it through taxes and yet how little they have to show for their contribution to the state. Parents are okay with sending their children to state-funded public schools or charter schools that use tax-payer funds. And most people are still fine with allow the ethics of the state medical system to make decisions on the biology of their child. The parents should have take their baby out months ago. Did they not see the writing on the wall?
