British toddler Alfie Evans dies after 5 days without life support

A memorial for Alfie Evans
(Image credit: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

Alfie Evans, the British toddler whose health care was at the center of an international legal battle, died early Saturday, five days after he was removed from life support. He was 23 months old.

Evans suffered from a rare degenerative brain condition which put him in a semi-vegetative state for over a year. His parents, Tom Evans and Kate James, sought to maintain his care, but his doctors said it would be "unkind and inhumane" to do so given his terminal diagnosis.

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"My gladiator lay down his shield and gained his wings at 02:30 ... absolutely heartbroken," Tom Evans wrote in a Facebook post announcing Alfie's death. James posted that she too is heartbroken, adding, "thank you everyone for all your support."

Read The Week's Matthew Walther on Alfie's saga here.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.