Piers Morgan has come out fighting for Alfie Evans and his parents and said today: ‘Sometimes miracles do happen’.
The Good Morning Britain presenter and father-of-four has backed calls for Tom Evans and Kate James to decide the fate of their son, who had life support withdrawn 36 hours ago.
Alfie’s doctors at Alder Hey have won the right to let him die and told a court last night and said abuse from some protesters made this ‘impossible’.
Suggesting the couple should be able to take ‘their boy home to die’, Piers Morgan said: ‘If it was my child I would like the final say. Alfie’s parents want the final choice. Why shouldn’t they be allowed that? Shouldn’t love be the ultimate way?’
Many viewers backed his call for Alfie’s parents to decide – but others said it was ‘cruel’ to prolong the toddler’s life when doctors say he is brain-damaged and has no hope of recovery.
Piers Morgan has come out fighting for Alfie Evans and his parents and said today they should have trhe final choice on his care, adding: ‘Miracles do happen’
The family of terminally ill toddler Alfie Evans have released pictures of the little boy clinging to life in his mother Kate’s arms
Viewers have praised Piers’ words about giving parents the final say on their child
In a fiery debate with TV doctor Hilary Jones and pro-life campaigner Caroline Farrow, Mr Morgan also said that medics sometimes do get things wrong, adding: ‘sometimes miracles do happen’.
Dr Hilary responded: ‘No they don’t’, adding: ‘In cases like this where there is a consensus among a lot of experience doctors they are very rarely wrong’.
Piers hit back: ‘You don’t believe any children ever recover when [doctors] medically believe they can’t?’, to which Dr Hilary told him: ‘That’s not a miracle – that’s maybe a misdiagnosis’.
He added: ‘Real love is letting go and letting go of your actual feelings for the benefit of your child’.
Mr Morgan said: ‘I feel incredibly sorry for Alfie Evans’ parents who have shown such extraordinary courage and determination.
‘I also feel incredibly sorry for all the wonderful staff at Alder Hey Hospital. This is a desperately sad situation for everyone involved’.
Ms Farrow, who has been one of Alfie’s most vocal supporters, accused Alder Hey of making ‘value judgments’ in condemning him to death.
She said Tom and Kate should have the right to take him to Italy and pursue other treatment.
‘They know he won’t suddenly get out of bed and walk’, she said, adding: ‘But the parents want a different form of care and quality of life for him. It should be their choice’.
Dr Hilary said the parents were suggesting doctors in Italy wanted to cut into his windpipe to help with his breathing and said: ‘Why would you want to do that? It could cause more distress’.
Pro-life campaigner Caroline Farrow, journalist Hilary Freeman and Dr Hilary Jones (left to right) were involved in a heated debate on Alfie’s life on GMB today
Tom Evans, Alfie’s father, pictured speaking to supporters outside the Liverpool hospital last night, but the family will return to court again later
Journalist Hilary Freeman spoke about aborting her unborn child after doctors advised her it would be severely disabled if it was born.
She said: ‘I took that decision on medical advice. I spoke to experts, read papers and spoke to parents with severely disabled children.
‘I didn’t want to do it. Every fibre in my body wanted to keep and love my daughter but I made that decision’.
Ms Freeman pointed to the Hippocratic oath taken by medics, which forces them to ‘promises first, do no harm’.
When asked about even Pope Francis getting involved, she said: ‘Yes but the bishops of England and Wales say we should listen to the hospital doctors and they know what they are doing. We should take the doctors’ authority and the judges. This has nothing to do with the church’.
Alfie Evans has survived the night and is breathing unaided almost 36 hours after his life support machine was switched off.
The toddler’s parents Kate James and Tom Evans are not giving up their fight to get him to the Pope’s children’s hospital in Rome and will fight a ruling against them at the Court of Appeal this afternoon.
Yesterday a High Court judge refused their legal challenge to release him Alder Hey in Liverpool and fly the toddler to Italy during an emergency hearing held in Manchester.
Mr Justice Hayden said this should be the ‘final chapter’ for Alfie, who he called ‘a fighter, resolute, courageous and a warrior’, and asked his doctors whether he could be allowed to go home.
The judge also slammed Christian pro-life supporters including law student Pavel Stroilov who he accused of giving Mr Evans ‘false hope’.
The judge described him as a ‘fanatical and deluded man’ after he filed a private prosecution accusing doctors treating Alfie of murder and said his legal advice had come ‘perilously close’ to contempt of court.
‘The court of appeal have reached out to us and said they are going to set back three judges to hear the case,’ Mr Evans told reporters outside hospital on Tuesday night.
‘In reality, he could be in Italy right now. We all know the military air force are ready to take him and a team of doctors are there.
‘We’ve also got a German air ambulance team, who attempted to take him in the first place, ready… the reality is these people are eager to get him out of the country and I’m not giving up because Alfie’s breathing away, he’s not suffering’
Alfie, who suffers from an undiagnosed degenerative neurological condition, is clinging to life more than 30 hours after the doctors stopped providing ‘ventilation support’.
Alfie’s parents, Tom Evans and Kate James, still want him moved to a hospital in Rome, with an air ambulance on standby to fly him there after the Italian government granted him citizenship in a bid to have him transferred.
Doctors in Liverpool, who believe it is in Alfie’s best interests to have life support switched off, say he cannot survive and that the trip would be wrong and pointless.
At a special High Court hearing in Manchester yesterday afternoon, Mr Justice Hayden refused to let him fly to Rome, saying the long-running case had reached its ‘final chapter’.
One of the hospital doctors said the soonest they could move him home would be three to five days, but that ‘hostility’ to doctors would make that impossible and that there was ‘genuine fear’ among medics.
Mr Evans claimed that he and Alfie’s mother ‘had to give him mouth to mouth resuscitation to keep him alive because his lips turned blue’.
A doctor giving evidence, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, said: ‘If I was being honest I think in Alfie’s situation [a return home] would have to be staged. I do not feel confident that we can say right now we can just send him home.
‘We have to be sure we can work with the family and we are not going job obstructed by the supporters who are threatening us and posting things on Facebook.’
Around eight police officers in riot gear guarded the courtroom at the Manchester Civil Justice Centre, with police also stationed outside the hospital where protests continue.
Mr Justice Hayden said he had told Mr Evans, who was not in court this afternoon, that not everyone in the Army [Alfie’s Army, a supporters’ group], ‘had his back’.