Charlie's Fight for Parental Rights

             Since the GoFundMe sensation has taken off, the public has been made hyperaware of varying cases concerning things from medical treatments, kidnappings, animal abuse, college tuitions, etc. Although many medical cases concerning whether or not to continue treatment tend to make it to national news, the GoFundMe for Charlie Gard has drawn almost 100,000 supporters worldwide.

              USA Today’s Melissa Moschella wrote an opinion piece concerning the ongoing battle Charlie’s parents are facing due to their desire to have an experimental procedure done to potentially help Charlie. The fate after the procedure cannot be determined, and they have received backlash from the hospital and Justice presiding over the case as well as people across the globe.

              Moschella, a professor at Columbia University who has published novels concerning parental rights, medical ethics, and children’s autonomy, aims her article at those opposing the experimental treatment for Charlie. She asks her readers, and helps guide them through each answer choice, who should be responsible for deciding Charlie’s fate since he cannot. Moschella declares the correct answer to be that the parent’s should have the authority to decide what happens to their child. Along with Hirano, the doctor planning on performing the experimental therapy, the parents, several US Supreme Court cases entitling parental rights to their children, and both the European Convention of Human Rights, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, I agree with Moschella and the many people donating toward helping Charlie in that the parents should have the authority to make the decisions regarding their son.

              Moschella makes an excellent point in that it is only the parents who are most directly affected by the fate of their son, and thus it should be for them to decide what that fate should be. The parents should be the one to make the necessary decisions regarding their son and his health seeing as they are the ones who brought him into this world, pay for the medical procedures, and would have to live with the void of losing him should that be the case. Due to the parents being fully capable of making said decisions, and as the courts have no reason to suspect the current or future treatments are leaving Charlie in pain, the parents should have the right reserved to make the decisions they believe is best for their family.

              As Moschella also noted, the only way parental rights concerning the well-being of their children should be taken away is if there is evidence of abuse of neglect going on. I do agree in that if neglect or abuse is suspected that the courts retain the right to taken parental rights away, and make the decision they feel to be best .In Charlie’s case, this is not happening and thus the parents should reserve their parental rights.

              Charlie’s case has touched many people worldwide, and this case has the power to shape how further decisions regarding parental rights in children’s medical cases are withheld, especially in Europe.