Sad end to baby battle

LONDON Charlie Gard, the terminally ill British boy whose heartbreaking case elicited sympathy and support from Pope Francis and United States President Donald Trump, and inflamed an international debate over endof-life rights, died yesterday.

Charlie’s parents, Chris Gard and Connie Yates, announced the 11-month-old’s death a day after a British court ruled that the infant should be moved to hospice care and disconnected from a ventilator, a spokesman for the family said.

Yates said in a statement to The Guardian: ‘‘Our beautiful little boy has gone, we are so proud of you Charlie.’’

For several months, Charlie’s parents had been fighting in court to keep him alive. His case became the personification of a passionate debate over the right to live or die, his parents’ right to choose for their child, and whether his doctors had an obligation to intervene in his care.

The bitter legal battle came to an exhausting and emotional end on Friday when High Court Judge Nicholas Francis made the decision to move Charlie to hospice care and let him die, after Charlie’s parents and doctors could not agree on how much time the child should have to live.

London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital, which had been treating Charlie, said it had been ‘‘a uniquely painful and distressing process’’ for everyone.

Charlie, who was born with a rare genetic condition called mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome, had sustained brain damage that had taken away his ability to see, hear or breathe on his own.

His parents had raised money to take him to the US for an experimental treatment they had not yet tried, but doctors at Great Ormond Street asserted that the child had no chance of survival.

The case trickled through the British court system and ended up in the European Court of Human Rights, which declined to hear it, upholding previous court rulings that it was in Charlie’s best interests to let him die.

It was decided earlier this week that Charlie’s parents should let him go, when it became clear that the experimental treatment they wanted for their son was not possible. Washington Post