It’s safe to say many in the social conservative movement were not thrilled when thrice married and previously self-confessed abortion-on-demand-supporting Donald Trump emerged as the frontrunner in last year’s Republican presidential primary race.



Of course Trump “converted” to the pro-life cause years ago and his statements on the subject during the campaign certainly seemed to indicate he was genuinely interested in saving unborn lives. Still, a lot of conservatives were skeptical.



Not long ago, however, Trump demonstrated he was serious about his pro-life convictions in offering to assist (in any way possible) British infant Charlie Gard to receive potentially life-saving treatment. Gard’s case has become internationally recognized as a leading example of what excessive government bureaucracy and the unfeeling forces of a single-payer healthcare system can do to people in the real world.



Many are saying the case means much more in the larger scheme of things.



David Catron wrote in The American Spectator, “The boy’s parents disagreed with that decision [to withhold treatment] and initiated a legal challenge against it, but they got nowhere in the lower courts and Britain’s High Court ruled against them. And, when the parents appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, it didn’t deign to hear the case.



“Under ordinary circumstances, this would boil down to resources. The NHS, to paraphrase Margaret Thatcher, is running out of other people’s money. But, in Charlie’s case, money is not a problem. Gard and Yates have raised more than £1.3 million from sympathetic donors, so it would cost the NHS nothing to accede to their wishes. So, why won’t they set Charlie free? The answer is all too obvious: Socialized medicine isn’t about health care — it’s about power. The bureaucrats of the social democratic state see the resourceful individualism represented by Charlie’s parents as an existential threat.”



The Charlie Gard situation is fascinating not only because it involves the truly human story of two parents dropping everything in their lives to try and prolong the life of their baby, but also due to the serious ethical questions involved with denying readily available medical treatment – to anyone. Every parent – or should I say, most parents – would go to similar lengths as Charlie’s folks did to save a child.



Life is precious and with today’s rapidly advancing medical technology anything is possible in the future. The pro-life movement fought desperately to keep Terry Schiavo on life support (in 2005) for that very reason. Tossing aside Schiavo’s husband’s possible complicity in her injuries there was no reason for the courts to intervene in circumstances where incapacitated Terry had willing and loving people to care for her and the financial wherewithal to keep her alive in hopes of someday making a breakthrough in her condition.



No one knows what tomorrow will bring and God is capable of any kind of wonder. Perhaps a miracle is waiting for little Charlie Gard. We can only hope he has the chance to find out.



The main dilemma for proponents of single-payer socialized medicine in the Schiavo and Gard cases is not the legal difficulties involved and probable public condemnation to follow in callously allowing them to die without hope; no, it’s easy to find some governmental power to achieve that end.



The real issue for the ruling class is…what ensues if the treatment works?



What might happen to the liberals’ already flimsy arguments on abortion, euthanasia and other matters of life and death if the world witnesses wealthy people like Donald Trump and rich nations like the United States going to such lengths to save the life of one little human being?



Answer: it pulls the proverbial rug out from underneath them. The entirety of the liberal pro-death contention concerns their ability to plead that an unborn baby is merely a “tissue mass” and can be extracted from the womb and discarded without much bother by a doctor who feels no pain or shame in extinguishing an innocent life.



The outrage is selective as well – at least where liberals are concerned. Two years ago the world reacted in horror when Cecil the lion met an untimely death, legally killed by an American big game hunter in Africa; but how about the instances of hopelessly trapped whales that are saved from suffocation and death by international efforts to rescue them (usually through the use of a Russian ice breaking ships)?



The media loves telling these heroic tales such as this one where four orcas were liberated from their undeniable fate if no human acted to help them. It’s safe to say there are many people who would celebrate such an effort. So why wouldn’t the world remember the “liberation” of little Charlie Gard from his British hospital captivity in just the same light?



If we release some whales why is it less joyous to save a baby, if only for a little while?



The Gard case will not be ignored. And if you feel some reassurance because the issue seems separated from the U.S. by the Atlantic Ocean, don’t be. Once any government gains control over your life or death healthcare decisions it sets an awful precedent.



Concerned Women for America President Penny Nance wrote at Fox News, “Although he lives in the U.K., Charlie’s case is not irrelevant to Americans. While frustrating and difficult, this is the reality of big government and socialized medicine. When the government becomes the ultimate decision maker, the rights of the individual are secondary...



“In the U.S., we do have the relative freedom to pursue alternative treatments and research cures. However, a small, yet controversial provision of ObamaCare, called the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), is moving us further away from a free market based health care system and is shoving us in the direction of a single-payer system.



“IPAB was modeled after the British NICE and is an essentially unchecked, unprecedented, rationing board of 15 unelected bureaucrats aimed at controlling Medicare costs…”



This is an instance where it’s difficult to believe how the world really has gone this far in removing fundamental God-given natural rights from the citizenry. Whereas care decisions should be made by patients, doctors and guardians of the incapacitated now the government assumes those roles based on very human notions of what quality of life might be – and at what cost.



Further, those determinations are made far from the condition of the patient. One can only envision an Obamacare “death panel” debating the likelihood of recovery versus how much a treatment might cost. It kind of reminds me of the Scrooge-like Mr. Potter (in “It’s a Wonderful Life”) poring over his town’s medical profiles as head of the Bedford Falls Draft Board.



There’s just an arbitrary nature to it. No patient – especially one like little Charlie Gard – should be subject to the whims of people who could care less about his living or dying.



Thankfully, at least for Charlie and his parents there are some in Congress doing something to remedy the problem.



Michael W. Chapman of CNS News reported, “House Representatives Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) and Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) introduced legislation [Tuesday] that would grant lawful permanent resident status in the United States to Christopher Gard, Connie Yates, and their 11-month-old son Charlie Gard, who suffers from a rare genetic disorder. Charlie's parents are trying to free their son from a hospital in London -- which wants to remove his life support and let him die -- in order to receive an experimental treatment in the United States or at the Vatican hospital in Rome...



“’Not only does experimental treatment provide the only chance to save little Charlie’s life, it also offers the opportunity for Charlie to positively impact the chance of recovery for others suffering from this condition in the future,’ they said. ‘We believe that Charlie and his parents should have this option, should they choose to pursue it.’”



And there’s the crux of the matter; not only would treatment potentially help Charlie live, but even if it fails some future child could benefit from what the doctors learn in treating Charlie.



Should he succumb to his condition he still will not have died in vain.



Liberals love dispensing government assistance to those who may or may not need it but when it comes to helping an innocent baby receive treatment they’re all too willing to turn a cold shoulder and let him die. Americans should not forget the lessons learned from the Charlie Gard case or else all of us might someday end up just as a name on a clipboard somewhere in a cluttered government conference room with our life – or death – arbitrarily in a bureaucrat’s hands.