Demonstrably awful: The right to life and the selective non-treatment of disabled babies and young children

Over the past 25 years, there have been deeply troubling cases which centred on the highly contested issue of whether there are circumstances that permit parents, doctors or the courts to take a decision that a young disabled child, often a baby, should not survive. In the United Kingdom and elsewhere, such cases have provoked substantial debate in medical literature and the wider public domain. The issue has emerged and re-emerged across this period: recent examples include re A (Children) (Conjoined Twins: Surgical Separation) (2000)1 Glass v. UK (2004)2 and Portsmouth NHS Trust v. Wyatt and others (2004).3