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Alfie Evans on April 23, 2018 hours before he was removed from his ventilator. Thomas Evans / Facebook screen-grab

IMPORTANT: For live updates on the Alfie Evans case click here.

April 25, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – With global attention toward 23-month-old Alfie Evans dramatically spiking in the past few days, lawmakers and other leaders from all over the world have begun speaking out for the child’s right to life. Alfie was removed from his ventilator on April 23 just after 9:00 PM, and his life now hangs in the balance. 

Pope Francis, who has extended the Vatican’s support to the Evans family throughout the ordeal, most recently tweeted on Monday that he was “renew[ing] my appeal that the suffering of his parents may be heard and that their desire to seek new forms of treatment may be granted.”

Alfie has an unidentified neurodegenerative condition that Alder Hey Children’s Hospital claims is untreatable. His parents, Tom Evans and Kate James, are currently locked in a bitter legal battle against both the hospital and the UK court system, which have decided that Alfie must be left to die and cannot be transferred to another hospital.

“I think it's right to give Alfie another chance,” European Union Parliament President Antonio Tajani said Tuesday. “There should be hope for this little European citizen, whose life every attempt should be made to save.”

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Catholic Herald contributing editor Ed Condon lamented Wednesday that silence of most politicians within the United Kingdom on the subject “speaks volumes about how total is the level of institutional deference and how engrained the culture of death.” However, a few have spoken out.

English Member of the European Parliament Steven Woolfe, who has previously attempted to intervene on Alfie’s behalf, continues his vocal support. Yesterday, he challenged Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Jeremy Hunt for his silence and inaction in the case:

Speaking for a delegation from the UK Independence Party (UKIP), party leader Gerard Batten forcefully denounced the British courts’ judgments against Alfie as “a gateway to totalitarianism.”

“The dismissal by the court of the wishes of Alfie’s parents, and the refusal to allow help by the cooperative Italian government is beyond the pale of human rationality and decency,” Batten continued. “We must call a stop to this, and give Alfie a chance to live in the arms of his parents.”

Another UK parliamentarian, Sir Edward Leigh, accused Alder Hey Children’s Hospital of “holding an Italian citizen hostage.” He called on Secretary of State for Foreign & Commonwealth Affairs Boris Johnson and the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office to “act quickly to let Alfie live.”

The Italian government granted Alfie Italian citizenship yesterday in hopes it would assist his transfer to Rome’s Bambino Gesu Paediatric Hospital, which has offered to treat him, and since then numerous Italian politicians have spoken out on his behalf.

Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs Angelino Alfano wrote a tweet Monday hoping that “being an Italian citizen will allow the child immediate transfer to Italy.”

“As a mother, I have no words to describe what I feel: the ‘ultra-civilised Europe, we live in has decided to kill an innocent boy and to stop his father and mother from doing whatever they can to keep him alive,” Brothers of Italy leader Giorgia Meloni, leader of the country’s Brothers of Italy party, declared.

“On these important issues, we understand – if anything were necessary – that it is not true that ideologies do not exist,” Italian Member of European Parliament Lorenzo Cesa said in a statement issued Tuesday. “There are those who defend life to the last and support Alfie's parents and there are those who are cynical and claim the right to determine the death, pulling the plug to a small European citizen that we, today, we want to defend. We stop ideologies that want to determine death.”

Elisabetta Gardini, who leads Italy’s Forza Italia party in the European Parliament, expressed pride that her country reached out to save the boy’s life. “In front of stories like Charlie and Alfie I'm happy to be Italian!” she tweeted.

Massimiliano Salini, Italian Member of European Parliament and former President of the Italian Province of Cremona, blasted the “blind obstinacy of those who want to end the existence of a patient,” and declared it “unacceptable” that the state could deem any life “useless.”

On Wednesday, Polish President Andrzej Duda tweeted his own call to save Alfie’s life.

Marijana Petir, who represents Croatia in the European Parliament, announced on Wednesday that she and several other MEPS have called on the European Commission to “act urgently” to protect Alfie and his parents’ rights. She added that the UK courts’ judgment was incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.

In the United States, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee called Alfie’s plight “what happens when the government gets in complete control of the healthcare system.”

“There is no such thing as a disposable human being, as an expendable, worthless, human being,” Huckabee continued. “But that is the decision the British government has made.”

Alfie's parents Tom and Kate are awaiting a decision from an appeal's court this afternoon in London regarding whether or not Alfie will be able to leave Alder Hey hospital in Liverpool and travel to a hospital in Rome.