Alfie Evans is a very sick 23-month-old boy in Great Britain who has been ordered by government officials to die. On Tuesday, Alfie’s parents lost their last-ditch legal effort to be allowed to seek treatment for their son in Italy, where he was granted special citizenship. All his parents want is to take him to Italy; they’re not asking for any more care in the UK. British doctors stopped providing care Monday, removing life-support — oxygen, food and water. As of this writing, Alfie is still alive, though he will almost certainly succumb soon to a serious brain condition.

As Matt Walsh writes, however, “When the death certificate for Alfie Evans is issued, under ‘cause of death’ it ought to say this: pride. The pride of a judge who did not want his judgment questioned. The pride of doctors who did not want to be proven wrong. The pride of a government that claims authority over life and death. ‘Tyranny’ and ‘unconscionable evil’ could also be cited.” In fact, Walsh argues, “A hospital is holding a child hostage against the will of his parents, and the courts are barring the family from boarding a helicopter and leaving the country. This is kidnapping and murder.”

Alfie isn’t the first victim of the bureaucratic culture of death, either.

Last year, UK authorities likewise ordered the death of 11-month-old Charlie Guard, despite his parents’ efforts to bring him to the U.S. for treatment. But don’t think it’s limited to the UK. In 2005, Terri Schiavo was dehydrated to death when her husband fought to end treatment her parents wanted to continue. And Michelle Malkin recounts the story of Haleigh Poutre, who, also in 2005, was declared “virtually brain-dead” and removed from the ventilator and feeding tube. Unlike these other stories, however, Haleigh miraculously survived. Malkin writes, “Fast forward to 2018. At 24, Haleigh lives with adoptive, loving parents. She is confined to a wheelchair, but attends school and occupational therapy. She laughs, she smiles, she lives.”

The bottom line is that Alfie and Charlie’s story is what happens to medical care when the government is more worried about the return on investment than about human life. We live in an age where human life has been devalued because of abortion on demand and increasing euthanasia. Thus we have bureaucrats deciding whether someone else lives or dies, even depriving parents of their rights to care for their own children. If ObamaCare is left to metastasize in American medicine, the next Alfie or Charlie will be in your neighborhood hospital.