Baby Charlotte

It's Monday morning and as sure as the sun rises a story emerges from the news that just makes you despair (well, me anyway).

I'll precis the story but link to an article with more detail.
A couple had a child extremely prematurely. At birth it weighed 1lb and had multiple underdeveloped organs. The medical team, against all probability, kept the child alive through constant resuscitations but in the end asked the parents for permission not to resuscitate if required again as the child had no quality of life, no chance of recovery, had a very short life expectancy and was drawing on hospital resources to the degree that other sick children could not receive treatment that would improve their quality of life. The parents fought, and won, their legal battles at times when their child was gravely ill, the taxpayer bearing the substantial cost of their case.

Fast forward to today.... the parents are to separate and neither is to take care of the child.

Whilst as a parent I understand their natural desire to see their child live one has to wonder what motivated these people to fight so strongly before yet now seem so disinterested in her plight.

Could it be that now the media spotlight is off them and the newspaper and magazine exclusives have dried up they see the world differently?
Could it be that for the first time in 3 years they've actually listened to what the medical staff have been saying all along?
Could it be that they just don't love this little girl after all, at least not in her broken state?

It's a tragic, tragic story where no-one wins. Not the tax-payer, the hard pressed hospital staff, the parents and family and certainly not Charlotte (OK, perhaps a handful of barristers earned a bucket full of shekels and are no doubt donating that all to children's charities as we speak).

It does, however, remind me that perhaps some adults, for the sake of others, just shouldn't have any rights at all.