Doctors Want to Pull Plug on 11-Month-Old. Mom Fighting to Stop Them, Wants God to Decide
“I see a child who is injured. He needs love. He needs care. I have it. I can give it.”
Words of desperation from a mother who is pleading for her 11-month-old son in High Court. King’s College Hospital wants to end the little boy’s life support treatments, but she is fighting to “let God decide.”
It’s hard to imagine how the care of a baby boy, not even one year old, could get to this point. But according to specialists at the hospital, further treatment is not in the “best interests” of Isaiah Haastrup.
Now his mother, Takesha Thomas, and his father, Lanre Haastrup, are trying to stop them from ending their son’s life.
Thomas, 36, told the judge that when she speaks to her son, “he will respond, slowly, be opening one eye.” Doctors do acknowledge that Isaiah is on a low level of consciousness.
But they also say he cannot move or breathe on his own, and he is ventilator-dependent. Isaiah is identified as “profoundly disabled.”
He was born on Feb. 18, 2017 at the same hospital where he is still being cared for in London. He was not breathing and doctors found no heartbeat, leading to “catastrophic” brain damage.
A specialist disputed the mother’s claims of Isaiah’s responses to the judge, “I have never witnessed it . . . what is the point of having ventilation? He is alive but is he living?”
“To say it is so poor, it is not worth living, that is not right,” added Thomas. “It is not their decision to make . . . If God wants to take the person, He will.”
A Pentecostal Christian, she says his life is “worth preserving.”
Lanre Haastrup, a lawyer himself, has been trying to make a case for his little boy. He pleaded, saying that it was easy for them to make such a cold decision when they hadn’t seen or felt the ties that connected him to his son.
“You have not seen Isaiah being cuddled and stroked by mummy and daddy,” he challenged.
Although the hospital representatives acknowledge the parents have had to go through a tremendous amount of pain and suffering, the hospital claims its decision is only in Isaiah’s best interests.
They are positive his condition “will not improve.”
Now the judge is being faced with the difficult task of analyzing the evidence to determine if Isaiah should continue treatments or have life support turned off.
Until the trial ends, we can only hope and pray that whatever decision is made, little Isaiah will not be in pain.
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