Patients in detention

British-born baby Charlie Gard is set to have his first birthday on Aug. 4—unless hospital officials turn off his ventilator, against the wishes of his parents.

Courts have debated whether to let Charlie live, and his parents have made a simple plea: Let us decide what’s best for him. A British judge’s consistent answer has been no, with a final decision possibly looming before the end of July.

By July 17, a U.S.-based physician had traveled to London to assess Charlie’s condition, including whether he’s a candidate for an experimental therapy his parents would like to try. They waited for results and battled for their parental rights.

Charlie’s diagnosis—mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome—is a rare genetic disease that causes brain damage and a progressive weakening of muscles. Charlie can’t breath without a ventilator, and hospital officials say he can’t move his arms and legs on his own. The disease has no known cure.

The baby’s parents planned to travel to the United States to seek an experimental treatment. They knew it was a long shot, but wanted to see if Charlie could possibly improve.

Officials at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London protested. They told a judge the infant had no hope, and they asked for permission to remove life-sustaining care. The judge agreed, despite the parents’ plea to allow them to use the $1.7 million they’ve raised from an outpouring of international support to seek treatment outside England.

The parents lost their appeal in the Supreme Court, and European court judges refused to intervene, even as European officials came to a different conclusion in another case of life and death.

MEANWHILE, the world rightly mourned the loss of Chinese activist Liu Xiaobo, 61, who lost his freedom after he helped draft Charter 08—a pro-democracy document that insists, “Every person is born with inherent rights to dignity and freedom.”

In late June the Nobel Peace Prize winner lay dying in a Chinese hospital after eight years of imprisonment for promoting democracy in the Communist regime (see "China's laureate outlaw" in this issue). But Chinese officials refused to let Liu leave the country, insisting his late-stage liver cancer was beyond treatment and saying he wasn’t well enough to travel.

An American physician and a German doctor visiting Liu disagreed, but it was too late: Liu died July 13. Critics of China say Liu likely lingered without adequate medical care far too long.

But even when his prognosis seemed most grim and his prospects of survival nearly gone, officials in the European Union urged China to allow Liu to “receive medical assistance at a place of his choosing in China or overseas”—yet they didn’t say the same regarding Baby Charlie.

Indeed, British officials refused to let Charlie leave the hospital, much less travel abroad for treatment. Even when it appeared doctors would remove his life support in late June, officials refused to allow his parents to take him home to die.

The anguishing dynamic raises a critical question: If a dying man like Liu Xiaobo should be allowed to choose the course of his own care, shouldn’t the parents of a vulnerable infant be given the same choice?

The hospital argued no, saying Charlie’s parents have “parental responsibility” for their son, but “overriding control” belongs to the courts. Charlie’s court-appointed advocate: Victoria Butler-Cole, an attorney and the chairman of Compassion in Dying—a group backing euthanasia.

The judge in the case agreed to hear more evidence, and Dr. Michio Hirano of Columbia University arrived in London on July 17 to examine Charlie and conduct brain scans.

Before his arrival, the doctor said he thought nucleoside therapy presents a “small but significant” chance Charlie’s brain function could improve. Tests on Charlie would give him further info, and his parents hoped for a reprieve.

LIU’S DEATH came weeks after another notable death following abuse in a communist regime: American college student Otto Warmbier, 22, died days after returning to the United States in a coma after more than a year of imprisonment in North Korea.

In both cases, grief is palpable: Mourning over Liu’s loss after a lifetime of advocacy, and sadness over Warmbier’s relatively short life cut off at the threshold of an adulthood of potential.

For Baby Charlie, it hasn’t been clear what his life would be like, even if treatment worked beyond expectations. But it is clear he’s brought his parents joy and that they see the inherent dignity of human life that Liu wrote about before his own death.

Christians know inherent dignity flows from God making every person in His own image. Without that knowledge, the value of human life becomes debatable, especially if it’s based solely on man-made notions of value or potential.

Where can it all lead?

A pair of philosophers from Australia showed the extreme end in a 2012 article published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, where they argued for “after-birth abortion.” The professors wrote that infants aren’t persons in a “morally relevant sense” since they haven’t developed future aims.

The writers argued for a legal option for parents to kill their newborn child if the baby is born with a birth defect—or if a healthy baby poses an undue burden on the parents or society. In one perverse way, their logic makes sense: “We claim that killing a newborn could be ethically permissible in all the circumstances where abortion would be.”

That’s a far cry from the view of King David, who knew what it was like to love—and lose—a newborn child of his own. Though David’s infant son did not live, he afterward still worshipped God as the giver and taker of life. And he still wrote about the wonder of every child God forms in a mother’s womb: “I praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”