A Kansas mother whose son suffers from a debilitating condition similar to that of Alfie Evans is pleading with U.K. doctors to reconsider what life with dignity looks like.
Faithwire has been covering the case of Alfie Evans, a critically ill U.K. toddler, since August. In the months since those initial reports, Alfie’s parents have undergone a legal battle similar to that of the late Charlie Gard, an English boy with a similar condition whose doctors successfully advocated to end his life last summer.
You Probably Missed the Most Important Lesson Charlie Gard Taught Us
Last Friday, protests erupted outside Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool after doctors set a date to switch off 23-month-old Alfie’s ventilator. Despite the pleas from his parents to pursue treatment for their son abroad, the courts have sided with Alfie’s doctors, who believe that death is the child’s most humane option.
In a YouTube video posted late last month, mother Robbie Kramer offers a beautifully compelling argument for why these medical professionals are “100 percent wrong.”
Kramer and her husband had two healthy children when their third child, Keith, was born. Keith has an undiagnosed condition that makes it impossible for him to speak, eat, breathe or even blink on his own.
Doctors initially gave him 14 months to live, but as Kramer shares in the video, her son is now 26 years old. And to those who would claim that Keith’s life lacks meaning or dignity, Kramer offers some eye-opening details about their extraordinary family life.
While showing viewers all of the in-home medical equipment required for Keith’s care, Kramer shares that, incredibly, her son has not had a single pressure sore in his entire life. During a brief walk-through of their “ordinary home,” the mother-of-three shows that it is possible for someone like Keith or Alfie to receive excellent care in a safe, clean, peaceful home full of love.
“This works, family,” Robbie shares. “I want you to know that it works. There is nothing in this world that says that Keith had to die … in the hospital because he wasn’t ‘viable.’”
“We have come to know that there is nothing that we can do without God’s help. And we have been changed because of Keith being in our home. Day in and day out, seeing the struggle or seeing what he goes through. And let me tell you, we appreciate what we have now … so much more. We have so much more gratitude than what we had before.”
“I want you to know, folks, that we have been blessed by having Keith in our home,” she continues. “He shows us humility, compassion, love — Keith may not be able to do the things that you and I can do, but Keith can pray, and when Keith prays, lots of beautiful things happen for people.”
Kramer then addresses the doctors charged with Alfie Evans’ care:
“I want to let you know that, with all due respect, you’re wrong. You’re wrong to let this child die,” she says. “Please, I beg of you, from the middle of Kansas, America, to reconsider giving this child an opportunity to go home … to his family. And I guarantee you that child will live.”
What she says next will bring you to tears:
“We kind of have a policy around here that says every day that Keith lives is a beautiful day.”
Kramer shares that though she and her family “struggle every day,” they believe that “anything worth while is worth working hard for.”
“And let me tell you family, Keith is worth while. Very much worth while.”
Kramer concludes her message with a final plea for Alfie Evans:
“With all our hearts, with 25-plus years of caring for someone 100-percent, who is 100-percent disabled — unable to move or care for himself — it works. By the grace of God, it works. So please, please, I’m begging you, from our family, for little Alfie Evans and his family: Please, you directors at Alder Hey, do let that child go home. And your conscience will be so much happier.”
Our world is often so misguided when it comes to understanding the meaning of life and dignity. This mother’s passionate testimony is proof of the type of love Christ calls us all to.
Here’s a thought worth pondering for the doctors at Alder Hey: If someone like Alfie Evans or Keith Kramer can inspire such an out-of-this world love that is so lacking in our modern culture, what right do you have to deprive the world of their lives?
May God bless the Evans and Kramer families, and may justice prevail for Alfie Evans in a way that it tragically did not for Charlie Gard.