12-year-old Archie Battersbee has died after National Health Service (NHS) doctors withdrew his life support, with family members describing the process as “barbaric”.
“He was taken off medication at 10 a.m., his stats remained stable until two hours later when they removed the ventilation,” confirmed Ella Rose Carter, fiancée to the youngster’s eldest brother, Tom, on behalf of the family.
“There is absolutely nothing dignified about watching a family member or a child suffocate,” she said.
“We hope no family has to go through what we have been through. It’s barbaric.”
Archie’s parents, Paul Battersbee and Hollie Dance, supported by the Christian Legal Centre, had appealed against doctors’ decision to remove his life support to the High Court, Court of Appeal, Supreme Court, and the European Court of Human Rights, but to no avail.
Doctors also refused their request that he be transferred to a hospice for his final moments, with judges backing them on this as well.
Some criticised Archie’s family during their legal battle, with one outlet quoting a doctor as saying he “[found] it hard to have much sympathy for Archie Battersbee’s parents” because, as he put it, they believed “they know better than the medical professionals/modern medicine” and were not “allowing their son a dignified death”.
The courts, where they agreed to hear Archie’s parents’ case at all, agreed with doctors that it was not in his “best interests” for him to remain on life support or be transferred to a hospice.
The United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities (UNRPD) had requested that the British authorities postpone the removal of Archie’s life support while they considered his case, but doctors refused and were, once again, backed up by the domestic judiciary.
Archie’s mother says she does not know how she is “going to cope” with returning home and being confronted by the spot where she found Archie prior to his hospitalisation — she believes he accidentally injured himself taking part in a botched ‘blackout challenge’ for TikTok — and that she believes she “will go downhill for a little while.”