The country’s highest court rejected the family’s application to appeal yesterday’s decision by the Court of Appeal to withdraw his life support. His mother Hollie Dance said she ‘can’t take him home, there’s nothing she can do’, adding: ‘It’s not right, Archie is my child. Other people should not decide where he will take his last breath and whether he will live or die. It is wrong.” Ms Dance and Archie’s father, Paul Battersbee, tried to prolong his treatment to give a United Nations panel time to look into the child’s case. Image: Archie has been on life support since April This afternoon, a panel of three High Court judges refused leave for Ms Dance and Mr Battersbee to appeal, concluding that the Court of Appeal “got the right decision”. The panel said that while they had “great sympathy for the plight of Archie’s devoted parents who are faced with a circumstance that is every parent’s nightmare – the loss of a much-loved child… there is no prospect of any meaningful recovery (from Archie)”. “Even if life-sustaining treatment was maintained, Archie would die in the coming weeks from organ failure and then heart failure.”
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They added: “Retaining medical status, as (Mr Justice Hayden in the High Court) held in his very sympathetic judgment, ‘serves only to prolong his death.’ His parents received a last-minute hearing at the Court of Appeal on Monday after the government asked it to urgently consider a request by the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities to continue to treat Archie. But after hearing the case, appeal court judges refused to stay the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment from Barts Health NHS Trust and said there would be a short stay until 12 noon today. Archie has been at the center of a lengthy legal battle since he was seriously injured in an incident at his home in Southend, Essex, in April. Image: Archie and his mother Hollie Dance Mrs Dance found her son unconscious with a ligature over his head. He believes he was participating in an online challenge. He has been in a coma ever since and has not regained consciousness. He is being kept alive by a combination of medical interventions, including ventilation and drug treatments. The High Court had previously ruled that Archie’s treatment had to be ended because doctors treating him at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, east London, said he was “brain stem dead”. The Court of Appeal upheld this decision and the Supreme Court refused to give the family more time to continue their fight. Pictured: Archie’s father Paul Battersbee and his mother Hollie Dance His family insisted the treatment must continue, saying the young man’s heart was still beating and he was holding his mother’s hand. His parents claim that stopping the treatment would be in breach of the UK’s obligations under Articles 10 and 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and Article 6 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. These international obligations say that states must take all necessary measures to ensure that people with disabilities enjoy equal rights and that governments must do all they can to prevent the deaths of children and young people.
