By DEXTER DUGGAN
Two news photos demonstrated the gulf widening in Western society — a young father with an agonized helpless look on his face, and a phalanx of police officers in their yellow vests blocking prison doors.
The father was 21-year-old Tom Evans, the second dad in England in less than a year to have his baby kidnapped by a Culture of Death that decided to execute the ill infant.
The yellow police blocked the entrance to Liverpool’s Alder Hey Hospital, where 23-month-old Alfie Evans was officially imprisoned until England’s medical and legal systems could bring about his early death, contrary to the passionate wishes of his parents.
The elder Evans and Alfie’s mother, Kate James, only asked that they be allowed to seek medical attention elsewhere for their son with a mysterious neurological illness. Maybe there’d be a medical miracle, which any family can hope and pray for.
They weren’t asking impossibly that doctors resurrect a corpse from beneath a marker at a graveyard. But the Culture of Death insisted that a graveyard was the only home to be allowed for Alfie.
If an ambulance crew finds a warm victim on the sidewalk shot five times, do they say, Let’s just take him to the morgue, he’s probably lost too much blood? Or do they fight to save his life if possible, regardless of possible future impairment?
Less than a year ago the young parents of 11-month-old Charlie Gard suffered the same agony with London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH), whose authorities demanded, and achieved, the demise of their son with a genetic disorder before the end of July.
Although “expert” medical opinion thought Alfie would die within minutes after his respiratory support was removed on Monday, April 23, he survived until the early hours of Saturday, April 28 — and even then there were suspicions about the reason for his rapid decline that morning before sunrise.
After he was off the respirator, he wasn’t fed for more than a day. If removing his breathing assistance wasn’t enough, more had to be done to finish him off.
Moreover, police actually warned they were monitoring online posts about the nature of criticism against the callous treatment of Alfie. Would Big Brother shortly be removing his gloves for a sharp knock at some pro-lifers’ doors?
In the case of each youngster, the parents had arranged for experimental treatment outside Britain, and aircraft were ready to fly the little boys away. There was to be no cost to the socialized National Health Service, which probably saw treating the infants as an unjustified drain on its resources.
The parents hadn’t demanded that the doctors treat the boys in some way these specialists thought unwise, but only to release them for medical care elsewhere by physicians who reached a different opinion. However, diversity of thought wasn’t allowed here. Just kidnapping.
Defenseless Charlie’s fate aroused such outrage that a person might have thought the beastly system had been taught a lesson and wouldn’t dare repeat its arrogance soon. However, like some other dictatorships facing public defiance, it doubled down, smearing its critics’ faces in the mud as it reprised the outrage with Alfie.
Columnist Noemie Emery posted at The Washington Examiner on May 1 that the two little boys’ parents “might just as well have been living in (Communist) East Germany before liberation, for all the control that they had over their lives or their funds and families and freedom of movement. The only things missing were the barbed wire and armed guards on the ramparts of the Berlin Wall.”
And traditional-values activist Gary Bauer noted the irony that while various governments say pregnant mothers are free to end the lives of their unborn children, this tragedy involved a mother being told she had no say in pleading to continue the life of her born baby.
“It’s hard to miss the profound irony here,” Bauer posted at The Washington Examiner on April 30.
“Many Western governments have enshrined the right of women to determine the fate of their unborn children, even if it results in the baby’s death. But in this case the government did the opposite, telling Alfie’s mother that she had no say in her baby’s fate. So much for women’s rights. . . .
“In fact,” Bauer added, “there have been at least 20 similar cases in England, according to legal experts there.”
He also recalled America’s Terri Schiavo — a disabled woman who was starved and dehydrated to death by order of Judge George Greer in Florida in 2005, just after Easter, because her estranged husband wanted her gone, even though the rest of Terri’s family pleaded to be allowed to care for her.
A wide range of notables came to Alfie’s defense. In England this included the liberally inclined media personality Piers Morgan and conservatively based politician Nigel Farage. U.S. pundit Laura Ingraham said Farage got up at 2:30 a.m. in England in order to come on her U.S. program to speak up for Alfie. A dark London loomed in the background as Farage spoke.
This recalled the general unity on pro-life issues of a half-century ago, before pro-death “progressives” started plowing under humane laws they didn’t like.
They were advancing their social revolution that echoed all too much the “quality of life” thinking of the late, unlamented National Socialists of Germany — who in important ways had been inspired by U.S. eugenicist and Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger.
In 1965 even the most liberal U.S. Democrat would have been aghast and uncomprehending at the idea that sucking out a healthy preborn baby’s brains was somehow related to promoting “women’s rights.” But Democrats today routinely are expected to bless such atrocity or risk being purged from their party.
It’s medical ethics as decided in a German beer hall in the 1930s, but only after the social elite of that era — like the mainstream media of today — pushed that pitcher of poison onto the serving tables.
In addition to fervent defenders of Alfie who demonstrated in England, the little boy’s “army” popped up elsewhere, too, including Poland and Italy — not only everyday people but also prominent politicians who denounced what the system of death was doing in Britain.
At the UK Catholic Herald, Paolo Gambi posted on May 1: “It is very rare for Italians to be proud of their government, and even rarer for pro-life Catholics to be on the side of a government that imposed, among other things, same-sex marriage. But Alfie managed this.
“Other than a small number of voices poisoned by contemporary ideologies, the decision of the government to give Italian citizenship to the ‘little warrior’ was widely welcomed not only by Catholics but by most Italians,” Gambi wrote.
Yes, the Italian government had gone so far as to declare the toddler an Italian in hopes this would aid in removing him from Liverpool, for medical care at the Pope’s own hospital. But England’s heels were dug in very far indeed, although its officialdom’s conscience didn’t even seem to be half-an-inch deep.
While Alfie still lived on April 27, Iranian-born Catholic writer Sohrab Ahmari posted at the Commentary site to urge Pope Francis to follow up on his appeal for Alfie’s life by actually going to Alder Hey Hospital to visit the toddler and his parents, then declaring that Alfie was coming to Rome with him.
“Now imagine the impact of such a scene on the world’s conscience,” Ahmari wrote. “A pontiff and a toddler could change the course of Western history.”
A few days earlier, Ahmari had noted the police threat to speech as he posted at Commentary on April 25:
“As if the authoritarian aspect of all this weren’t crystal clear, local police also warned social-media users to be careful what they say online about the matter. ‘I would like to make people aware that these posts are being monitored,’ said Chief Inspector Chris Gibson, ‘and remind social-media users that any offenses including malicious communications and threatening behavior will be investigated and where necessary will be acted upon’.”
Of course, unduly threatening remarks might be found on social media. But is society now expected passively to accept the news about an ill baby intentionally being victimized by medicalized murder, then quickly turn to the entertainment and sports pages?
Ahmari went on to note that class lines seemed to have formed in England over Alfie, with working-class people on social media supporting his cause, while the “administrative elite” took the other side.
It’s an elite well-known for worrying about the breakdown in democracy and about populism, Ahmari noted — but tone-deaf about how its own arrogance and arbitrary governance contributed to this discontent.
Two Kates
Despite the dangerous implications for civil life, the Royal family certainly didn’t send any of its members to Liverpool to stand in solidarity with some of Alfie’s Army outside the hospital — while, ironically, Princess Kate delivered her third child on the very day that Commoner Kate’s toddler was taken off life support.
No one could believe for a moment that some wigged judge would get away with it if he’d ruled that a Royal baby wasn’t worthy of living, despite what the baby’s own parents thought.
New York Post columnist Karol Markowicz posted at Fox News as judges kept ruling against Alfie, “One of the key facts about Alfie is that no one knows what is ailing him. This alone should be a reason to keep him alive. His lack of definitive diagnosis should mean that, at minimum, he be kept alive until doctors can figure it out.
“The confidence with which doctors are proclaiming Alfie has no chance to improve might make sense if they knew what was wrong with him in the first place. That they don’t, and are letting him die anyway, is damning,” Markowicz said.
Where Was Trump?
Although Pope Francis stood up for both Alfie’s and Charlie’s lives, conspicuously missing this time around was Donald Trump, who had contributed immensely last year in bringing Charlie to public attention by tweeting for him.
Although Alfie received plenty of attention without the American president’s aid, think of the pressure that Trump could have exerted — Trump, who even tweeted North Korea’s dangerous “little rocket man” to his knees — if he had tweeted his displeasure over Alfie’s mistreatment to British Prime Minister Theresa May.
When President Reagan, Pope John Paul II, and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher were in alliance in the 1980s, remember what they did to bring down Soviet Communism. Think of the chance missed by Trump when he could have joined Francis in calling upon May now.
Unfortunately, there’ll probably be more cases like this coming up. So Trump best prepare himself and his diplomatic niceties.
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