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The Weekly is a rundown of news by the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission highlighting the week’s top news stories from the public square and providing commentary on the big issues of our day.

How to Understand the Alfie Evans Controversy

Understanding the Facts

Less than a year after the Charlie Gard case, another terminally ill British infant is gaining international attention and raising concerns about the rights of parents in Britain.

A few months after he was born in May 2016, Alfie Evans began to show signs of having a developmental disorder. Then, on December 14, 2016, Alfie was taken to an emergency room because of a high temperature and seizures. Doctors diagnosed the child as having a degenerative neurological condition, though the underlying condition or cause remains unknown. Since then, Alfie’s condition has continued to deteriorate, and he has lost most of his brain matter. He was in a coma and on ventilation until this past Monday, when life-support was withdrawn because of a court order.

Last December, the medical center where Alfie was being treated, Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, petitioned the courts to discontinue ventilation and other treatment. The child’s parents, Tom Evans and Kate James, objected and wanted to take Alfie to hospitals in either Rome or Munich. The British courts have repeatedly rejected the parents preference and refuse to allow the infant to leave the country, claiming that it is in Alfie’s best interest to be taken off ventilation and to receive symptom management and palliative care. (Currently, the child is receiving food and fluids, but is not on a ventilator.)

On Thursday, Alfie’s father said he would be meeting with doctors to discuss taking his child home.

Understanding the Law

Under the British law known as the Children’s Act (1989), when a court determines “any question with respect to (a)the upbringing of a child; or (b)the administration of a child’s property or the application of any income arising from it, the child’s welfare shall be the court’s paramount consideration.” The legal reasoning of the British courts is that the government is seeking the “best interest” of Alfie and thus has an obligation that supersedes the desire of the parents to seek additional care.

In a decision handed down by the Family Division of the High Court of Justice, a judge ruled that, “The continued provision of ventilation, in circumstances which I am persuaded is futile, now compromises Alfie’s future dignity and fails to respect his autonomy.” On Wednesday, the Court of Appeal—the highest court within the Senior Courts of England and Wales, and second only to the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom—upheld the earlier High Court ruling.

Understanding the Ethics

The case of Alfie Evans has a host of ethical difficulties attached to it. A few questions relevant to this case include: When should someone be permitted to die? Under what circumstances is it permissible to withhold treatment and to allow natural causes to end a life? Who has the best interest of the child at heart? What is the role of the parent versus the state in deciding what medical options to pursue for a sick child?

It is within the rights of parents to decide to withhold treatment for Alfie given his grave diagnosis. This would not be considered active euthanasia since the parents would not be intending Alfie’s death, but are electing to no longer use artificial life-sustaining measures to keep him alive. This is not the same thing as killing. Allowing natural causes to end someone’s life is not morally illicit, nor is it in the same category of actively cooperating to bring about someone’s death. The parents are ethically justified to allow their son to die. This is a decision best left to parents, who have a God-given right, and natural right, to decide their son’s treatment.

What is indeed unethical is for the state to intervene against the wishes of the parents, who desire to take Alfie to Italy.

Medical decisions, especially when life and death hang in the balance, should be left to parents, not the state. The state should not interfere or block parents’ wishes to prolong a child’s life. Nor should the state actively procure the death of a child, especially when parents have other options available, as Alfie’s case certainly presents. England’s healthcare system is acting unethically in the case of Alfie Evans. By refusing to allow Alfie to seek treatment elsewhere, the state is usurping the God-given authority of parents over children, and using such co-opted authority to deny Alfie life-sustaining measures, thereby hastening his death.

Explicit in Scripture is parental authority over children (Deut. 11:19; Eph. 6:4). The parent-child relationship is one of divine origin and design, accomplished through the one-flesh union of a mother and father. Scripturally speaking, parents are tasked with raising children. For this reason, the mother and father of a child ought to retain primary authority over the child. This is grounded on the basis of an innate link between parent and child—whether biological or adoptive—and right of the parent over the child. This is both commonsensical and appeals intuitively to our sense of justice. The love a parent has for a child is unlike any other love a human can know and speaks to the sense of care and best-interest a parent has for their child.

This week on ERLC podcasts: Daniel Darling talks to John Stonestreet about what it means to live on mission for God. On the Capitol Conversations podcast, Matt Hawkins moderates a panel on criminal justice reform featuring Ed Copeland, James Kirkwood, Heather Rice-Minus and Julie Warren. On the Countermoves podcast, Andrew Walker talks to Tim Goeglein about the ten years since the death of William F. Buckley. And on the ERLC podcast, Todd Wagner talks about pressing on when you fail as a parent.

Other Issues

American Culture

Key findings about Americans’ belief in God
Pew Research Center

The overwhelming majority of Americans, including a majority of the religiously unaffiliated, say they believe in God or a higher power. Read six key takeaways from a report on Americans' belief in God.

The U.S. prisoner population continued to shrink in 2016, new data show
WonkBlog

The number of adults under criminal justice supervision continued its long decline in 2016, according new data the Bureau of Justice Statistics . The total correctional population dropped by 63,000 adults, reflecting decreases in both the incarcerated (jail or prison) and community supervision (probation or parole) populations.

Bioethics

What's Wrong With Growing Blobs of Brain Tissue?
The Atlantic

Last week, Rusty Gage and colleagues at the Salk Institute announced that they had successfully transplanted lab-grown blobs of human brain tissue into mice. Gage’s team grew the blobs, known as brain organoids, from human stem cells. Once surgically implanted into rodent brains, the organoids continued growing, and their neurons formed connections with those of the surrounding brains.

Christianity and Culture

Black Americans are more likely than overall public to be Christian, Protestant
Pew Research Center

Nearly eight-in-ten black Americans identify as Christian, compared with 70% of whites, 77% of Latinos and just 34% of Asian Americans.

Southwest's heroic pilot known for sharing her faith
Baptist Press

When members of First Baptist Church in Boerne, Texas, heard recordings of radio transmissions from a Southwest Airlines pilot who made a harrowing emergency landing this week in Philadelphia, they recognized the voice as one of their own.

Family Issues

Does Family Structure Help Explain the Racial Divide in Maternal Mortality?
Institute for Family Studies Blog

by Naomi Schaefer Riley ( @NaomiSRiley ) Racism, of the explicit and implicit kind, is the primary cause of different outcomes for black and white Americans. A version of this argument was articulated in a recent article in New York Times magazine that suggested that the disparities in maternal mortality for black and white mothers can be explained, in part, by “pervasive, longstanding racial bias.

Religious Liberty

The First Amendment Didn't Separate Church and State—Christianity Did
Public Discourse

There is a strain of thought one encounters with some frequency: namely, that the First Amendment to the US Constitution—by virtue of prohibiting religious establishment and protecting the individual right to free exercise—banishes religion from the public realm and assigns it exclusively to the sphere of personal belief.

Senate Confirms Religious Liberty Expert For Seat On 5th Circuit
Religion Clause

The U.S. Senate yesterday by a vote of 50- 47, confirmed Stuart Kyle Duncan, of Louisiana, to be United States Circuit Judge for the Fifth Circuit. ( Senate vote details ). Duncan has an extensive record of research and litigation on church-state and religious liberty issues.

5,000 Pastors Rally to Defend Housing Tax Break Ruled Unconstitutional
Christianity Today

Appeal: Exemptions do more than just save pastors $800 million a year. When a pastor responds to late-night prayer request or invites congregants to his home for Bible study, is he just doing his job or going beyond the call of duty?

Sexuality Issues

If California’s LGBT Therapy Ban Had Been Law 30 Years Ago, I Might Have Killed Myself
The Federalist

While living in California more than 30 years ago, I had access to sound, effective, time-tested psychotherapy. Because of it, I walked away from the transgender life I had lived as Laura Jensen for eight years in San Francisco. Yet if I had been prevented from having access to such people and materials, as Assembly Bill 2943 proposes, the bill would have been a “stay trans and die” bill for me.

The 2020 census will count same-sex couples for the first time
The Week

The next census is getting another update. Aside from the addition of a controversial citizenship question , the 2020 census will also count same-sex couples for the first time in U.S. history, the Census Bureau recently announced. Previously, the census gathered data about coupled households with two options: "husband or wife" or "unmarried partner."

How the New Corporate Elite Sold Same-Sex Marriage to the American Public
Public Discourse

Though it was now almost three years ago, the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision provides us with an opportunity to ask some important questions about our culture. How did same-sex marriage come to America? Where is an America with same-sex marriage headed next? What does it imply about us that it did?