You've probably never heard of Charlie Gard. He's a terminally ill, 10-month-old baby, who has now been sentenced to death by the European Court on Human Rights, an Orwellian organization, if ever there has been one, which determined that while his parents wanted to take him to the United States for a long-shot, potentially life-saving treatment, they couldn't. Instead, the court ruled, the great Ormond Street Hospital for Children would withdraw all life support

killing Charlie. What was the court's justification? Charlie had to, quote, unquote, die with dignity.

You see, Charlie suffers from a mitochondrial disease that destroys the muscles in the brain.

There was no available treatment in the United Kingdom, and so Charlie's parents, Chris Gard and Connie

Yates, raised $1.6 million to fly him to the U.S. for an experimental treatment, but the hospital argued that the treatment wouldn't help Charlie and would prolong his suffering and that they knew better than the parents who had to suffer through his illness and care for him every single day. Thus, the hospital argued that it would be in Charlie's best interest to die. UK courts agreed. The guards then appealed to the EU, and now the court has ruled against

them. With the ECHR, that's the European Commission on Human Rights, stating, quote, Charlie would

suffer significant harm if his present suffering was prolonged without any realistic prospect of

improvement, and the experimental therapy would be of no effective benefit. The hospital issued its own

perverse statement. They said, quote, our thoughts are with Charlie's parents on receipt of the news that we now know will be

very distressing for them. Today's decision by the European Court of Human Rights marks the end of what

has been a very difficult process. And our priority is to provide every possible support to Charlie's

parents as we prepare for the next steps. Despite the hospital's statement that it would not immediately change a standard of care, his parents now report that the hospital will withdraw life support tomorrow. His parents announced, quote, we begged them to give us the weekend. Friends and family wanted to come and see Charlie for the last time, but now there isn't even time for that. Doctors said they would not rush to turn off his ventilator, but we are being rushed. Not only are we not allowed to take our son to an expert hospital to save his life, we also can't choose how or when our son dies. There are several levels to the perversity here. First, for all the talk of the evils of the American system of health care, at least we promote freedom of choice and give as many options to people for their care as they can afford. As the doctor who offered experimental treatment said in court,

if Charlie had been ill at any institution in the United States, they would immediately have begun

the treatment. But in the UK, a socialized medicine country, where individual needs come second to

the preservation of the system, there is less concern with parental rights.

In the U.S., we are so interested in the freedom to obtain care that we insist on releasing a legally brain-dead girl to her mother so long as her mother wishes to keep her hooked up to a ventilator.

In the UK, they are insistent on withdrawing the opportunity for life-saving care because it is better to kill the child than keep it alive.

While this case became

a court proceeding, every single day, the National Health Service, the NHS, makes decisions about how to ration care. Bernie Sanders tweets about how nobody should be denied care because they can't afford it, but that's what happens all the time under socialized medicine. The difference being, it's not about you if we'll be not being able to afford it. It's about the government not being able to afford it. And you do not even have the

capacity to raise the money to fund the care yourself. Second, a government run system breeds a shift in control. In the U.S., the case of Charlie Guard is a major scandal. In the EU, it's apparently no big deal. That's because we in the United States like to think that we control our lives, and that as parents, our priorities matter than those of random doctors who don't raise our kids. But once you give up control of your life and death decisions to an impersonal government, it is nearly impossible to take back that control. This case could have been easy. The hospital could have released the child back to the parents. The hospital didn't do it because it believed that it had the final save. And why shouldn't it? It always has the final say under the NHS system.

Third, allowing the government to control the value of life means devaluing life. It has been a

fundamental hallmark of Western civilization that life ought to be preserved in spite of pain,

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