In the past 24 hours, baby Alfie Evans has garnered a friend in both the Charlie Gard family and Brexit author Nigel Farage.
Appearing on Fox News with Laura Ingraham on Thursday, Farage spared no words and denounced the British government for stripping the Evans family of their parental rights and instituting a “state-sponsored euthanasia.”
“Any parent in the world who’s got a child that’s sick would move heaven and earth if somebody else could offer them a different treatment,” Farage told Ingraham. “And yet what happens here is, our state-run medical system decides there is nothing else that can be done, and backed up by the state courts, they make a decision that those parents are not fit to move their child somewhere else.”
“So this gets to the absolute heart of how much freedom does the individual have, how much decision-making process do the parents have,” Farage continued. “Or are our children now owned by the state?”
The conversation shifted to Alfie Evans’ father, who was essentially bullied by Alder Hey Children’s Hospital into issuing a statement telling his supporters to pack up their picket signs and go home. The statement was followed by reports that said Alder Hey staff told the family that little Alfie would not be let go unless the father demonstrated a “sea change” in his attitude.
“It’s almost like they broke Alfie’s father today,” Ingraham said.
Farage recalled his experience in the Charlie Gard case just last year where hospital staff accused him of damaging their reputations.
“I turned up outside the hospital, in this case Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, and I was told in no uncertain terms by the PR services for the hospital that what I was doing was damaging the reputation of the hospital by doing press reports outside when this little boy was dying,” Farage recalled.
Speculation goes that Alder Hey refuses to release Alfie Evans into the parents’ custody so that they can transport him to Europe for further treatment because they are afraid that his potential recovery could embarrass them and usurp their authority.
“And it is just — it’s classic of the establishment closing ranks, the state being all powerful,” Farage concluded. “And frankly, what is happening today and what is happening right now is a form of state-sponsored euthanasia and I hate it.”