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12-year-old Archie BattersbeeHollie Dance

LONDON (LifeSiteNews) – Britain’s High Court ruled Friday that 12-year-old Archie Battersbee cannot be moved from the hospital – where he is currently residing – to a hospice for private palliative care. His mother called the ruling “sick” and “outrageous” and looks to appeal the decision.

After the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) refused to intervene Wednesday against the decision of Archie’s doctors to turn off his life support – a move his parents have fiercely opposed – the boy’s mother, Hollie Dance, and father, Paul Battersbee, requested to have their son moved to a hospice where he would be provided palliative care and could “spend his last moments” with his family in private, but were blocked by hospital staff.

Archie’s parents petitioned the U.K.’s High Court on Thursday to allow their son to be moved to “a peaceful hospice to say goodbye.” The hearing went late into the evening, but the court handed down a ruling Friday afternoon determining that it would not be in the boy’s “best interests” to allow the transfer.

Arguing against keeping her son in the hospital where staff plan to remove his life support, Dance said that “[t]here’s absolutely no privacy, which is why, again, the courts keep going on about this dignified death – why aren’t we allowed to take our child to a hospice and spend his last moments, his last days together privately? Why is the hospital obstructing it?”

According to a report from Sky News, Archie was granted a stay of execution until 2 p.m. Friday to give the family time to file a legal challenge at the Court of Appeal. The Barts Health NHS Trust hospital at which Archie currently resides has stated that doctors will not remove any life support until all legal matters have been settled.

Although vying for the removal of Archie’s life support after declaring him “brain-stem dead,” doctors argued against taking Archie out of the hospital and into an ambulance for transfer, since it would “hasten premature deterioration.”

Justice Theis, who handed down Friday’s decision, declared that “Archie’s best interests must remain at the core of any conclusions reached by this court,” while denying his parents’ request.

“When considering the wishes of the family, why those wishes are held, the facilities at the hospice, what Archie is likely to have wanted … the risks involved in a transfer … and the increasing fragility of his medical condition, I am satisfied that … he should remain at the hospital when treatment is withdrawn,” Theis said.

Describing the decision as “outrageous,” Dance lamented that “our wishes as a family have been denied by the authorities.”

“We are broken, but we are keeping going, because we love Archie and refuse to give up on him,” the ailing boy’s mother vowed. She told reporters present she wished to appeal the decision.

Friday’s decision is the latest development of the ongoing battle between Archie’s parents and the hospital and British legal system, which have blocked them at every turn.

The family had fought at the Court of Appeal to have the hospital’s decision to remove life support against their wishes overturned, but were refused. They then sought assistance from the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities, but were denied extra time to pursue their case by the Supreme Court, subsequently petitioning the ECHR to intervene, only to be denied assistance in the fight to give their son a chance to recover.

The family have also received offers from doctors in Japan and Italy to treat Archie. The young boy has remained unconscious after he was found in that condition by his mother on April 7 with a ligature round his neck, in what his mother believes to have been a prop for a social media challenge known as the “blackout challenge.”

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