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Alfie and Haleigh and Charlie and Jahi
Townhall.com ^ | April 25, 2018 | Michelle Malkin

Posted on 04/25/2018 5:34:51 AM PDT by Kaslin

When British hospital officials tried to pull the plug on 23-month-old toddler Alfie Evans on Monday night in arrogant defiance of his parents' wishes, many Americans took to Twitter to count their blessings that they live in a country that would not allow such tyranny.

"Stories like Alfie Evans make me realize how grateful I am to live in America where freedom still exists," one young social media user wrote.

"Folks, is this what we want for America? Parents rendered helpless before the gods of socialized medicine?" retired Army Lt. Col. Allen West asked.

Alfie's plight comes less than a year after another British baby boy with a rare genetic condition, Charlie Gard, was taken off life support after his parents lost a similar battle with judges and medical officials.

"WAKE UP AMERICA! We cannot let this happen in the U.S.," social media user Dian tweeted.

But it has happened -- and continues to happen -- in America. How quickly the public forgets.

In 2005, medical experts and child welfare bureaucrats in the state of Massachusetts deemed 11-year-old Haleigh Poutre "virtually brain-dead," in a "persistent vegetative state," and not worth saving after she suffered such brutal beatings and sexual abuse by her stepfather that she was left in a coma. Doctors at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield and extermination agents at the Massachusetts Department of Social Services won a court order to remove Haleigh's ventilator and feeding tube. They collaborated on a "treatment" schedule to starve her of nourishment and oxygen until she succumbed to "death with dignity."

Haleigh and higher powers had other plans.

As state officials prepared to remove Haleigh's life support, the supposedly impossible happened: She emerged from the vegetative state that all the smarty-pants in lab coats had concluded was "irreversible." She began breathing on her own and picked up toys on command.

"There has been a change in her condition," a DSS spokeswoman grimly announced. "The vegetative state may not be a total vegetative state."

Like Alfie, Haleigh had an army of grass-roots pro-family and pro-life supporters who helped pressure the state-sanctioned murderers and bungling bureaucrats to back down. Fast forward to 2018. At 24, Haleigh lives with adoptive, loving parents. She is confined to a wheelchair, but attends school and occupational therapy. She laughs, she smiles, she lives.

Among Haleigh's prominent guardian angels: the Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network, founded by Schiavo's brother, Bobby Schindler, after a Florida judge ordered brain-injured Terri to be deprived of water and food, leading to her death by dehydration after 13 days in 2005. As Schindler noted after Haleigh's life was saved:

"(T)his is just one incident that made headline news. Indeed, most of the general public is completely unaware of how much these types of decisions are made every day and how our medical rights have been eroded by laws that have been changed to make it easier to deliberately kill our medically vulnerable."

Back in Britain, Alfie defied the medical professionals and survived the night off the ventilator as his parents begged court officials to take him to Rome. Benefactors have offered to pay for transportation and medical care; Italy granted Alfie citizenship.

As Alfie's life hangs in the balance, I think of another child written off by the experts here in the U.S.: Jahi McMath, whom medical experts declared "brain dead" after a routine tonsillectomy gone wrong in 2013. Children's Hospital Oakland pushed to have all life-sustaining medical treatment terminated; the professionals predicted quick deterioration.

But Jahi's mother (a professional nurse), Latasha "Nailah" Winkfield, refused to give up on her child. California declared Jahi legally brain dead, so with the Schiavo Foundation's help, Winkfield moved with her daughter to a long-term care facility in New Jersey.

Medical ethics writer Wesley Smith visited Jahi last fall and reported: "At the time of the tragedy, I believed ... that Jahi was, indeed, dead. But I now have strong doubts. It's nearly four years later, and Jahi's body still has not broken down. Her skin remains smooth. There are no foul odors in her room as would be expected when a brain-dead person's body deteriorates. She has experienced no visible bodily decline... Disabled is not dead."

So, where are all the left's human rights champions when you need them? Once again, there have been no rallying cries from Hollywood celebrities, no tweetstorms from the self-anointed guardians of children who embrace gun control in the name of saving lives and abortion in the name of choice.

Alfie's life matters and Charlie's life matters and Haleigh's life matters and Jahi's life matters because all lives matter. Parents' rights are human rights. If we yield to the culture of death and the culture of expediency that permeate government-run health care systems around the world, no lives are safe.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: alfieevans; hospitals; parentalrights

1 posted on 04/25/2018 5:34:51 AM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

I have prayed for them all as I heard about them.

Let me just say this:

Alfie’s life does NOT matter to the government.

...and neither does yours.

The NHS is wrapped up in a delusion of its own invincibility and correctness, that simple issues of Life and Morality are lost to them. They must protect their Power and their Ruling Status, and you must not question their decisions.

Can anything be more totalitarian than that?

May God grant them all Justice.


2 posted on 04/25/2018 5:47:37 AM PDT by William of Barsoom (In Omnia, Paratus)
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To: William of Barsoom

Amen


3 posted on 04/25/2018 5:48:46 AM PDT by Kaslin (Politicians are not born; they are excreted -Civilibus nati sunt; sunt excernitur. (Cicero)
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To: Kaslin
"There has been a change in her condition," a DSS spokeswoman grimly announced.

Someone needs to find a melee weapon and go to work. Then encourage the newly formed army of supporters to remember the those Britons at the Somme, and rise up, and systematically target those responsible, and beat them to death.

Sometimes you need a bloody revolution to change a nation's trajectory. No different than ours.

4 posted on 04/25/2018 5:49:24 AM PDT by Salvavida
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To: Kaslin

Remember when they laughed at Sarah Palin when she talked about death panels?


5 posted on 04/25/2018 6:08:28 AM PDT by gattaca ("Government's first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives." Ronald Reagan)
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To: All

Alfie!


6 posted on 04/25/2018 6:10:59 AM PDT by JonPreston (I post To: "All" because article posters rarely contribute to their own threads)
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To: Kaslin

Little Alfie and Charlie Gard are just the tip of the iceberg in Britain’s NHS death machine. Millions of Britains are having their lives cut short by socialized medicine. Death rates from cancer are higher in the UK because early diagnosis is delayed because of rationed screenings like mammograms, waits to see specialists and the denial of the newest lifesaving advances in cancer treatment. The elderly are being denied treatments that would be routine in the US. Death panels are the norm in the UK


7 posted on 04/25/2018 6:57:55 AM PDT by The Great RJ ("Socialists are happy until they run out of other people's money." Margaret Thatcher)
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To: Kaslin

This is proof that socialist governments consider their citizens as property. People who are property, are defined as slaves. Socialism/communism see people as property of the state. Dear anti-aging students consider what that means. Ask yourself how you can prevent slavery. Remember in all communist countries individuals were rounded up for resisting and executed. With Alfie’s treatment England moved from socialism to communism.


8 posted on 04/25/2018 7:23:18 AM PDT by Retvet (Retvete)
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To: gattaca

Terri Schiavo... ordered “executed” by the cruel method of withholding food and water. So ordered by courts. Right here in the goodle USA.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/lessons-learned-bitter-divide-terri-schiavo-death-article-1.2152267


9 posted on 04/25/2018 7:45:11 AM PDT by FiddlePig (The biggest threat to your sacred liberty is to not value it!)
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To: William of Barsoom

Same would be true if America had Single payer ins. And it would not stop at children, every chronic sick person would be on that list. I would be, even if it were the Black Boxed FDA approved drugs that caused my health problems. OA drugs ruined my GI Tract, PPI’s my spine and bones.


10 posted on 04/25/2018 7:59:30 AM PDT by GailA (Ret. SCPO wife: suck it up buttercups it's President Donald Trump!)
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To: Kaslin

Good article pointing out alternatives and that they are possibilities.


11 posted on 04/25/2018 8:27:05 AM PDT by Salvation ("With God all things are possible." Matthew 19:26)
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To: All

And yet these idiots are YEARNING to find life on other planets. Go figure.


12 posted on 04/25/2018 9:44:05 AM PDT by jackibutterfly (It' funny (NOT ha! ha!). We dehumanize humans and humanize animals.)
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