His mother, Hollie Dance, said a “dignified stint in a hospice” was all she had left to fight for after the family exhausted all legal avenues to keep him on life-support treatment. She said she wanted her son to “spend his last moments” privately with family. But on Friday the high court rejected the family’s request to move Archie from the Royal London Hospital. The hospital said Archie’s condition was too unstable to be transferred to a different environment. He said such a move would “likely hasten the premature deterioration that the family wishes to avoid, even with full intensive care equipment and staff on board”. A spokesman for the family said a hospice had agreed to take him in, adding: “Hospices are well and truly designed for palliative and palliative care. Archie is now obviously in palliative care, so there is no reason for him not to spend his final moments in a hospice.” The hospital told the family that Archie’s life support would be withdrawn at 11am on Thursday. He has been in a coma since he was found unconscious in April and is being kept alive by a combination of medical interventions, including ventilation and medication. Speaking to Times Radio ahead of the latest verdict in the case, Dance said: “The courts continue to make for this dignified death. Why aren’t we allowed to take our child to a hospice and spend his last moments, his last days, together in private?’ He accused the hospital of sending a threatening letter to end his treatment. He said: “The letter that went out a little late yesterday afternoon saying … ‘You have until 9 o’clock’, putting the lawyers under pressure again, which is what this hospital has been doing since day one.” Asked how Thursday would be, she teared up and said: “It’s going to be awful today. I woke up completely sick to my stomach. Like I just feel like this hospital has so much to answer for and I don’t really know what else to say today.” She added: “I wouldn’t want any other parents to go through what we went through, so I’ve tried to highlight a lot of issues since we’ve been here, like the online challenge, and I know So, so many people sat their kids down and used the story of Archie to hopefully save their lives. “Well, I’ll continue to make sure Archie’s name lives on. I will do everything I can to make sure parents don’t have to go through this awful situation with the courts.” Subscribe to First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every morning at 7am. BST The attorney general, Suella Braverman, said the case was “incredibly heartbreaking” but that the parents had sufficient legal rights and the courts would have looked at the issues “incredibly thoroughly”. He told Sky News: “I just have to put my deepest condolences to the family of Archie Battersbee, I can’t begin to imagine what he and his family have been through.” He added: “I think in general, yes, parents have sufficient rights. The legal presumption is that parents act in the best interests of their children until or unless proven otherwise. “These [cases] they are not simple. They are extremely complex issues involving detailed medical and medical ethics issues, as well as the welfare of the child. “And I’m confident that our courts and our judges will have looked at these issues incredibly thoroughly, incredibly sensitively, and come to the right decision.”
