Archie Battersbee – the 12-year-old boy who was at the center of a legal battle between his parents, doctors and the courts – died this Saturday in England.
The family was opposed to their brain-damaged son being taken off life support machines.
Archie Battersbee spent his final hours in hospital after the British High Court ruled that could not be transferred to a hospice.
his parents were “devastatedyou” having exhausted all legal avenues to keep him alive. The family requested the intervention of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), but they were told that the case “fell outside” their scope.
His mother, Hollie Dance, said Saturday that her son “fought to the end.”
The boy was found unconscious at his home in Southend, in the southeast of England, last April 7. Her mother, Dance, thinks could have suffocated while participating in a challenge from Internet with dire consequences.
Since then No was able to recover consciousness.
The doctors who treated him at the Royal London Hospital in the British capital considered that the child was in a state of “brain death” and they had asked to take him off his life support.
His parents hoped to transfer him to a hospice, but doctors warned that he was too unstable to be transported by ambulance and that this would “accelerate premature deterioration”.
disagreements
From the beginning, Archie’s parents disagreed with the medical conclusions and, with the support of Christian Concern, an ultra-conservative evangelical organization, appealed to different judicial instances to keep him alive.
The courts, however, repeatedly ruled in favor of the hospital, including the necessary authorization to take him off life support.
According to the mother, her son’s future should not “depend on the decision of a court or the hospital”, but should fall to the parents: “I don’t think I am clinging to hope, I simply ask for a realistic period of time for my son recovers from a brain injury.
“His heart still beats, he has held my hand and, like his mother, I know it’s still there“, he said on several occasions. “Until it is the will of God, I will not accept that he leaves. I know of miracles where people have come back from brain death.”
Last June, during a three-day hearing in the Family Division of the British High Court of Justice, the specialists assured that the different tests carried out on the child they had not shown some brain activity “perceptible”.
The magistrate in charge of the case then concluded that Archie died at noon on May 31, according to the magnetic resonance images of that day, and considered it proven that brainstem function hasbia irreversibly ceased. The court then gave the hospital permission to stop providing assisted ventilation to Archie.
The family, however, managed to appeal the ruling.
But the court again agreed with the hospital on July 15, and assured that continuing life support was “useless” because it would only serve “to delay his death, without being able to prolong his life.”
Doctors had argued that this support was “painful”, “contrary to dignity” and “ethically worrying”.
The disconnection order, which was to have been issued on Monday, was delayed again so that the Supreme Court, at the request of the government, could hear the request made by the United Nations Committee for the Rights of Disabled Persons, which had requested more time to analyze the case.
The court, however, refused to delay the disconnection.
The ruling argument
In her ruling Friday, Judge Mary Jane Theis concluded that a hospital transfer was not in the child’s best interest.
“Archie’s best interests must remain at the center of any conclusion to which this court arrives,” he argued.
“In considering the wishes of the family, why they uphold those wishes, the facilities at the hospice, what Archie probably would have wanted…the risks involved in a transfer…and the increasing fragility of his medical condition, I am satisfied that she should stay in hospital when treatment is withdrawn.
He also acknowledged the “unconditional love and dedication” of Archie’s family, which he said had been a “golden thread running through this case.”
“I hope that now Archie can have the opportunity to die in peaceful circumstances, with the family that meant as much to him as he clearly does to them.”
Responding to the High Court ruling on Friday, Archie’s mother regretted the decision and said they would continue to the end: “The authorities have denied all of our wishes as a family.”
But finally this Saturday the boy was disconnected.
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