Parents fight over fate of brain-damaged boy on life support
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Your support makes all the difference.Christopher Ibarra is a seven-month-old baby with an irreversible brain injury, a shell of a human being alive only because he is on life-support machinery in a hospital in Los Angeles.
For months, his mother has wanted to switch off the machines and, in her words, "let him go to heaven". But she has been opposed by his father, Moises Ibarra, who is in pre-trial custody accused of causing the injury by shaking Christopher violently and hurling him into his cot.
Mr Ibarra has a motive for keeping the baby alive for as long as possible: his prosecutors have said that if Christopher dies, the charges against him will be upgraded from assault to murder.
And so there is an impasse. Under Californian law, both parents are responsible for decisions about a child's future, with each holding a power of veto over the other. Technically, social workers or the courts could take that decision away from them, but they are reluctant to assume that responsibility.
It is a highly unusual set of circumstances, legal experts say, but one that illustrates how legal protections intended to protect children can end up working against what may be in their best interests.
Christopher's mother, Tamara Sepulveda, regards his continuing existence as "torture". The father, speaking through his lawyer, denies he is motivated by self-interest and says he is hoping for a miracle.
Christopher's life was precarious from the word go. His parents broke up and got back together repeatedly before his birth. They had no money, and lived in a shack beneath a motorway overpass. The mother was herself the victim of a childhood brain injury that impaired her speech.
Both parents have been declared unfit and Christopher has a court-appointed guardian. But he, too, feels at a loss. Harold LaFlamme told the Los Angeles Times: "If some third party makes a decision to turn off the juice, then are you giving the defendant parent a defence: 'I didn't kill the kid, the child's attorney did'?"
"As a general proposition, the juvenile courts prefer to let the parents make the decision. But that doesn't seem to be happening here."
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