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LONDON, England, January 22, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — The Polish government has issued a diplomatic passport to a Polish patient dying from the withdrawal of nutrition and hydration in an English hospital.
According to multiple Polish media sources, including the mainstream national newspaper Rzeczpospolita, the Polish government has issued the passport in an attempt to remove the Polish patient from the power of the British courts. Conservative news website wPolityce has reported that the passport is already on its way to London.
On December 15, a Court of Protection gave the U.K. National Health Service Trust caring for “RS” the permission to cease his clinically assisted nutrition and hydration (CANH). Justice Cohen ruled that to remove the treatment from the brain-damaged man was at the discretion of the NHS and RS’s wife. Although RS was a devout, pro-life Catholic who was opposed to euthanasia and objected to the court-ordered death of infant Alfie Evans, RS’s wife supported the NHS’s desire to end her husband’s life.
However, Justice Cohen’s decision was vehemently opposed by RS’s birth family, including his mother, two sisters, and niece.
With the support of Britain’s Christian Legal Centre, they have stopped the court-permitted dehydration and starvation of RS at least twice.
With the support of the Polish Government and Poland’s Ordo Iuris Institute for Legal Culture, they have three times petitioned the European Court of Human Rights for RS’s right to life.
The Polish Government has also asked Justice Cohen to allow it to bring their citizen back to Poland for treatment. Justice Cohen rejected this request, in part because of the danger RS might die en route. Justice Cohen has consistently voiced his opinion, shared by RS’s hospital doctors, that continued CANH is not in RS’s “best interests.”
The case has become a major scandal in Poland, public anger snowballing since the news spread to the Eastern European country in late December. Jacek Kotula, a Polish regional councillor and leading pro-life activist, told LifeSiteNews that “all Poland” is talking about it.
“Thank you for the support,” he said, referring to LifeSiteNews’ ongoing coverage of the case, “because it is a battle with the Civilization of Death.”
“For us Poles, euthanasia is Hitlerism [Nazism] … How can a normal person say that is in the best interests of a dying Pole that he should die? In Poland we fight until the end for life, which is the greatest gift of the Creator!”
However, the British courts do not agree, defining CANH as “medical treatment” that can be removed if doing so is considered in a patient’s “best interests.” Thus, although passive euthanasia is de facto permitted in Britain, de jure it is not.
RS was first hospitalized on November 6 after suffering a heart attack at home. Doctors testified that he suffered brain damage and predicted that he will never progress beyond a minimally conscious state. However, at least two specialists consulted by RS’s birth family believe that he might improve, and Poland’s “Budzik” (“alarm clock”) clinic, which specializes in disorders of consciousness, is ready to receive him.
RS’s hospital doctors estimate that, with continued CANH, the patient might live five or more years. However, as he has been without nutrition or more hydration than is needed for palliative care since last Thursday, time may be running out for him.
Developing …
To read LifeSiteNews’ detailed and up-to-date coverage of the RS case, please click on this link.
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