United Kingdom: the last hours alive for “R.S.”, a comatose patient. Stroilov (Christian Concern), “the way the legal system permits euthanasia”

“The way the British legal system uses a legal vacuum to actually permit euthanasia is horrible and tragic”. This is how Pavel Stroilov, speaker for the pro-life movement “Christian Concern”, comments the news that the Court of Appeal of the United Kingdom refused the mother of a comatose Polish patient the option to let the judges hear some specialists, according to whom the man’s faculties could partly be restored. “R.S.” – the patient can be known through these initials only – was already going to die on Sunday night when nutrition and hydration had been withdrawn from him. Fluids and food have been administered again while waiting for the Court of Appeal judges to take a decision, but they will be withdrawn tomorrow at 6.30 am for good. The man had fallen into a coma after a heart attack on 6th November last year. The Plymouth hospital where he has been admitted had decided to withdraw life support on Christmas Eve. It was the Polish government that, by overriding the British one, saved the patient while it resorted to the European Court of Human Rights to get “R.S.” back to his native country and treated. “Unfortunately, the Court of Strasbourg decided that the British have jurisdiction over the case”, Pavel Stroilov concludes. “The Court of Appeal judges decided not to listen to the man’s mother and sisters, according to whom the man, who was a practising Catholic, would not have wanted to die like that”.

Valentina Bombelli