The parents of a 12-year-old boy at the centre of a life-support treatment dispute have been given the right to take the case to the court of appeal after a high court judge ruled that the child was dead and his treatment could be stopped.
Mrs Justice Arbuthnot recently ruled that doctors could lawfully stop providing treatment to Archie Battersbee after considering evidence at a trial in the family division of the high court in London.
Archie’s parents, Hollie Dance and Paul Battersbee, from Southend, Essex, want court of appeal judges to consider the case. Dance and Battersbee, who are separated, asked Arbuthnot at a high court hearing on Monday to give them permission to mount an appeal, and Arbuthnot later gave Dance and Battersbee permission to take the case to the court of Appeal.
They are being supported by a campaign organisation called the Christian Legal Centre.
Andrea Williams, chief executive of the centre, said after Arbuthnot’s appeal decision: “A ruling that says death can be declared on the balance of probabilities sets a troubling precedent for our society and must be appealed.
“This case is the first of its kind in an English court and has raised significant moral, legal and medical questions as to when a person is dead.
“Archie’s parents believe that the time and manner of his death should be determined by God and claim a right to pray for a miracle until and unless that happens. That belief must be respected.
“The ideology of ‘dignity in death’, meaning a planned time of death as fixed and carried out by the doctors, should not be brutally imposed on families who do not believe in it.
“We will continue to stand with the family as they appeal the ruling and continue to pray for a miracle.”
Doctors treating Archie at the Royal London hospital in Whitechapel, east London, told Arbuthnot they believed the youngster was “brain-stem dead”. They said treatment should end and Archie should be disconnected from a ventilator.
Archie’s parents say their son’s heart is still beating and they want treatment to continue.
Lawyers representing the Royal London hospital’s governing trust, Barts health NHS trust, asked Arbuthnot to decide what actions were in Archie’s best interests.
The judge heard that Archie sustained brain damage in an incident at home in April. Dance said she found him unconscious with a ligature over his head on 7 April and thought he may have been taking part in an online challenge. The boy has never regained consciousness.
In an interview with the Guardian, Dance said the last two months had been “torture” but the family were forging ahead with an appeal and believed the judge had made “quite a few mistakes” in the case. She said she had seen small signs that her son’s health was improving.
“Archie should be given a lot longer,” she said. “There are Covid patients who get six months to a year and are on ventilators struggling for their life. Archie has had eight very short weeks and we have been in and out of court.”
Dance said the impact on the family since her son’s accident had been “emotionally draining”.
