Baby Indi Gregory Sentanced To Death By UK Judge Who Denies Appeal

The Charlie Gard story repeated itself in the UK, this time with a little girl whose parents wanted to extend her life and a government that decided it had a veto over such decisions.

This case was a little different. Indi Gregory was granted Italian citizenship on an emergency basis. A hospital in Italy was willing to continue her care.

The flight and medical expenses were covered and Indi was now the citizen of a foreign country that was lobbying for the right to go (to her new) home for medical treatment.

The British courts denied the appeal and ordered life support to be removed from her.

Her life support was removed. She had stopped breathing, but then recovered. She was ‘fighting hard’ to stay alive.

Indi has life-support removed after being transferred to hospice with police presence

8-month-old #IndiGregory as been transferred from the Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham to a hospice and has had her life-support removed after Friday’s ruling from the Court of Appeal.

It… pic.twitter.com/JEOfQ5uMEy

— Jacopo Coghe (@jacopocoghe) November 12, 2023

Did you catch that? Transferred to hospice — WITH POLICE PRESENCE. Just like the Alfie Evans case where heavy police presence made sure nothing came between that baby and his state-mandated death…

Baby Indi had a police presence ready at their hospice — presumably so that she wouldn’t be whisked away to the Italian Embassy where she might claim asylum.

In the end she was unable to continue the fight. Here is how ABC reported it, and how the courts viewed the entire ordeal.

Christian Concern said Indi Gregory died in a hospice on Monday morning after her life support was withdrawn on Sunday.

The 8-month-old baby had suffered brain damage as the result of a rare condition known as mitochondrial disease.
[…]
On Friday, Court of Appeal Justice Peter Jackson said doctors caring for Indi and other critically ill children had been put in an “extremely challenging” position by the legal tussle and decried what he described as “manipulative litigation tactics” designed to frustrate orders made by judges after careful consideration. — ABC

It was his ‘considered opinion’ that the baby’s life was not worth living. And yet, she struggled to survive.

Stories like this one highlight the hidden cost of ‘free’ universal health care which is neither free nor universal.

What it really does is shift the burden of payment from one private individual to a body of public officials. They have to deal with the same budget constraints as the rest of us.

In America you are free to keep trying hail-mary solutions to hard medical problems — so long as you can pay the doctors for their services. These cases often help lead to the development of innovative new healthcare protocols.

In England you are free of the responsibility of paying for such medical bills — and of any right to make the corresponding decisions.