Indi Gregory was a British eight-month-old who died last month after her parents were denied the right to take her to Italy for care, as well as the option to bring her home to die. Sadly, she is only the most recent in an unfortunate string of widely publicized cases of patients in the UK for whom parental rights were overridden or removed “in the best interests of the child.”

Each of these cases ended in the death of children.

Using “quality of life,” a nebulous metric at best, the UK government has repeatedly sided with doctors who believe the lie that death is better than suffering and that prematurely ending the life of a terminally ill individual is better than allowing them to live until their natural death.

Our neighbors to the north have legalized and are pushing “medical assistance in dying,” with documented cases of Canadian insurance companies and hospital organizations denying care to patients with chronic health conditions (even those that are not terminal!), offering instead to pay for or provide life-ending drugs.

As John Stonestreet at the Colson Center for Christian Worldview often says, the right to die can easily become the duty to die.

Here in the United States, these sorts of pressures are already a reality in the growing number of states that have legalized physician-assisted suicide. Indeed, the entire nation already witnessed the 2005 state-sanctioned starvation and subsequent death of Terri Schiavo, a woman with a severe brain injury, over the objections of her family.

My husband and I have friends whose daughter was diagnosed with hydrocephalus and Down Syndrome in the womb. Her parents were given dire prognoses and repeatedly told they should abort her. They were forced to change providers several times so they could find a team that supported their commitment to bearing and raising their daughter for as long as God would allow them to.

Imagine having your doctor’s first reaction to your difficult news be to completely discount the worth of your unborn baby (who, incidentally just turned one and is exceeding every grim prediction made about her life)!

The way a culture treats the unborn is an indicator of how it regards other vulnerable people. When American doctors counsel parents to abort based on prenatal testing that reveals a disability or other “undesirable” quality in their unborn children, is it so hard to imagine that others in the medical profession would suggest “death with dignity” to those already born?

It’s hard to wrap our minds around “civilized” nations such as ours having such a cavalier and callous response to those most in need of our protection and advocacy. Sadly, ever since elites made eugenics sound like enlightenment, our nation and the rest of the Western world have increasingly disregarded the vulnerable, all while insisting this impulse is rooted in compassion, not repulsion toward weakness and suffering.

This attitude is not merely a sentiment or a pervasive feeling. What the UK (and other European nations) show us is that it is—with increasing rapidity—the accepted reasoning for governments to usurp the authority of parents.

Though many cultural elites struggle to acknowledge their God-given authority, parents are the people who know and love their kids more than any organization or institution—no matter how motivated by “quality of life” or “best interests” it might claim to be—ever could. Mothers and fathers, especially those who recognize the image of God in their precious children, are willing and able to take on the responsibility of caring for them no matter the cost.

Believers in the resurrected Christ understand that neither suffering nor death are the end. Even when we are in a losing battle against disease, we know that it does not have the final word. Suffering is, in fact, one of the most effective teachers of what this life is truly for and shouldn’t be avoided at all costs.

Our culture’s current obsession with undermining parental rights in the context of transgenderism is simply one step on the slippery slope toward a UK-style use of the healthcare system to override parental authority.

Today it’s puberty blockers and surgical removal of healthy body parts, but tomorrow it could be medications given in lethal doses or life support removed against parents’ wishes and with the blessing of the “enlightened” minds of the medical community.

Here in Illinois, so-called Dignity in Dying legislation hasn’t passed…yet. But with a radically pro-abortion administration in power (and groups like Final Options Illinois pushing hard), who knows how soon we will face a ballot measure seeking to expand the culture of death in our state? This is why must remain vigilant, even about those policies that don’t seem like an imminent threat.

Policymakers and physicians with the NHS in the UK believe they are acting in the best interests of their citizens, but with the “option” to die has come the power to kill those who cannot choose.

May Indi Gregory rest in the arms of Jesus, may her family and loved ones find comfort in Christ, and may we all respond to the injustice they have suffered by standing for life—no matter where the cultural winds may blow.