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In these last days of the life of little Charlie Gard, his parents’ only desire is to spend a few quiet days with him at home before allowing him to die peace – so why is the hospital standing in their way?
Dave Andrusko, of National Right to Life News Today, is reporting on the contradictory position being taken by the Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) in London, where Charlie is presently being cared for. Hospital staff say they won’t stand in the way of the parents’ desire to bring their son home, but is doing everything in their power to make this wish impossible to achieve.
Andrusko, who was present in the courtroom this week, watched Charlie’s parents, Connie Yates and Chris Gard, tearfully agree that experimental therapy for their son was now too late due to inaction by the hospital for so many months when he might have benefited from an experimental treatment. Instead, hospital administrators decided it was time for Charlie to die and spent most of this precious time fighting his parents’ efforts to stop them.
With their fight now ended, all they want is to take their son home.
“All the parents are asking is to be allowed to take their child home to die. No can do, says the hospital’s lawyer, Katie Gollup,” Andrusko reports. “Problems with moving Charlie? (And, no, I am not making this up). According to Sky News, the judge deciding the case, Mr. Justice Francis, said that part of the disagreement appeared to be over GOSH’s view that a ventilator will not fit through the front door of the property to which Charlie’s parents want to take him.”
Apparently, the hospital also believes that the intensive ventilation Charlie requires to live can only be provided in a hospital setting and “cannot be provided at his parents’ home.”
“GOSH has worked assiduously since April to ensure that Charlie gets dead,” Andrusko reports. “Now, not only can the ventilator supposedly not fit through the front door (and, to repeat, I am not making this up), the only way Charlie’s ventilator can be properly provided is in a hospital setting.”
Just last week, Justice Francis conceded that Connie has spent 3,200 hours with Charlie which raises the question of how someone who has spent so much time in hospital at her son’s bedside could not know how to determine if a ventilator is working properly or not.
“Give me a break,” Andrusko writes.
Grant Armstrong, counsel for Charlie’s parents, told the court that all Charlie’s parents want is to spend a few days of tranquility with their son, outside of the hospital setting, before extubation, which is the process by which Charlie will be taken off life support and allowed to die.
As Armstrong pointed out to the judge, in April [a possible] US transfer was “not an obstacle to the care of Charlie but for some reason transfer from a hospital in central London to an outlying part of London seems to be problematic.”
An exasperated Armstrong concluded: “I can’t see what the problem is. On one hand saying they are not standing in the parents’ way, and on the other putting obstacles in the way which can’t be surmounted. The parents had hoped that Great Ormond Street would work with them.”
Once again, these devoted parents have seen their hopes dashed.
“Charlie is not expected to live until August 4, his first birthday,” Andrusko reports. “Time is very, very short.”
Let us keep up our prayers that this young family may finally be given the peace they deserve in order to fulfill God’s will for their lives.
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