Je Suis Charlie Gard

I know Gard wasn't French, but was born in the UK, in Bedfont, London. But this is kind of a counterpoint to the rather social justice warrior fad sort of thing that was Je Suis Charlie, when it was in reference to Charlie Hebdo. But I'm not mocking the tragedy that happened there. The shooting on the 7th of January, 2015 by two brothers, Saïd and Chérif Kouachi who sought to carry out the suicide mission for Al-Qaeda because of the way the magazine parodied the founding prophet of Islam, Mohamed, that was indeed a tragedy.  The magazine had done parodies on the Pope, Catholicism, and Christianity in general, but no Christian sought retribution in the deadly manner that the two Muslim brothers did.

However, this is not about Charlie Hebdo, but Charlie Gard, which is a tragedy just as bad, and just as important as the Charlie Hebdo shooting. Yet, many will not see it that way. Most have come to believe it as a matter of 'reproductive rights', and it is, to a certain extent. After all, if you're going to argue, 'my body, my choice', then there are at least two issues to consider here.

For one, Charlie Gard was born - he was out of the womb. Therefore, it was his mother's choice to carry him through to birth him. However, he was born with mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that causes progressive brain damage and muscle failure.

 On the other, the parents of Charlie Gard sought to keep him alive and seek treatment elsewhere, since the national children's hospital, Great Ormond Street Hospital (ironically having the acronym of GOSH), decided that it wasn't worth the effort to try and save Charlie Gard. Instead of letting the parents go elsewhere to try and treat Charlie Gard's condition, both the  British courts and the European Court of Human Rights supported GOSH's position to override the parents' choices on the matter. 

Think of that for the moment. Did Charlie Gard come out of the womb of any of the potential judges and  government figures that made this decision? No. Not to mention, most of the people that made the decision were men, with the few women making the decision not being the mother, the person that carried Charlie Gard in her body throughout his pregnancy and gave birth to him. So what happened to reproductive rights being the choice of the mother?  Apparently 'mother' then becomes defined as the role of the elitist bureaucracy of the government, that supposedly knows better than the parents on what choices they ought to make.

This sets a lot of precedence, considering that governments, even corporations are listening in on the poorly guided ethicists that have been postulating the notion for a while now that there is no difference between a fetus in the womb or outside the womb, so it could be argued that it is ethically ok to abort post birth. You have to wonder how far this twisted sort of ethics may go. Maybe there's no difference in aborting a child that hasn't reached the age of reason?  When would that age be?  Maybe one could abort their child before they graduate from high school, or if they don't choose the right college, or even want to go to college?  Further, if the government can override the parents, then if the government sees the child as a threat or dreg on society, then the government can step in and abort the child.

There are numerous ways this can go, which any of us here that have been involved in Post Apocalyptic writing and roleplay could easily come up with and make a story about. However, it's one thing for such concepts and scenarios to be the basis of a fiction, it's another thing when it appears to be turning into a potential reality.

So yes, I say je suis Charlie Gard, and also say that we potentially all are. In as much as governments, industries, and corporations want to own us, we are all Charlie Gard, and we all may potentially be murdered by these self-proclaimed masters if they decide they have no use for us any more.