Socialized Medicine and Parental Rights
Channel: misesmedia
Date: 2024-01-16

On May 9, 2016, Kate James and Tom Evans welcomed their first child, Alfie Evans, into the world. By the end of the year, however, their joy turned to horror as their infant son began suffering from seizures. Doctors diagnosed Alfie with a degenerative neurological condition similar to severe epilepsy. He remained on life support for a year, but doctors believed he would not recover and recommended ending his treatment. 

Alfie’s parents refused to consent to ceasing Alfie’s treatment, but Kate and Tom lived in Liverpool, where they were compelled to seek care exclusively through the British Government’s socialized healthcare system, the National Health Service. Instead of respecting Kate and Tom’s wishes, as doctors in the United States would be expected to do, Alfie’s doctors applied for court approval to withdraw his life support without parental consent. 

Both the U.S. and British common law systems recognize the “best-interest principle” as justification for overruling medical decisions parents make on their children’s behalf. In the United States, where healthcare is not a state-run enterprise, judges occasionally invoke the best-interest principle to overrule parents who refuse life-sustaining treatment for their children. 

In Britain, where the State owns the healthcare system, the law follows different standards. As with many similar cases, the British courts sided with Alfie’s doctors, invoking the best-interest principle not to provide treatment, but to withhold it. 

Kate and Tom were unwilling to give up, so they attempted to seek medical asylum in the United States and Rome. Their efforts won them an enormous following of supporters, nicknamed “Alfie’s Army,” and the Italian government even granted Alfie citizenship in an attempt to aid the parents. Yet the British courts still refused to let them take their child out of the country. 

British officials deferred to medical experts, who were certain Alfie would be unable to breathe unassisted. Assured that Alfie would pass quickly, the judge ruled that it would be “inhumane” to keep him on life support.

But the experts were wrong. Alfie was able to breathe without life support, albeit with great difficulty. As Alfie gasped for breath, his parents begged the medical staff to give him oxygen, but they were now legally obligated to refuse. In the name of upholding Alfie’s “best interest,” British officials forced him to suffer five excruciating days off life support before he finally passed away. 

Alfie’s story is but one example of the British government defying parental rights and deciding that a child’s “best interest” is to cease treatment. These tragedies reveal one of the oft-overlooked dangers of placing the government in charge of healthcare. When government bureaucrats are empowered to make medical decisions for your family, as they did for Alfie’s, whose interests do they really have in mind?

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