Dignity as recognition respect: lessons from the cases of Charlie Gard, Alfie Evans and Isaiah Haastrup

Charlie Gard, Alfie Evans, and Isaiah Haastrup were infants at the centre of highly publicised court proceedings in the United Kingdom concerning the permissibility of continuing life-sustaining treatment in the face of devastating neurological injury. In each case, the court authorised withdrawal of treatment in favour of palliative care, concluding that the infants should be allowed to die with dignity. The properties commonly thought to ground dignity-such as sentience, rational capacity, or human flourishing-however, were either absent or not threatened by continued treatment, creating an apparent tension in the court's reasoning: although withdrawal is justified as serving the infants' dignity, dignity itself appears unable to perform the adjudicative role it was assigned. In this paper, I articulate a novel account of dignity that understands treating a person with dignity as a process of moral reflection and action grounded in recognition respect. I argue that this account can adjudicate the cases of Charlie, Alfie, and Isaiah while preserving the moral assumptions reflected in the High Court rulings: that the infants were worthy of moral consideration, and that continued life-sustaining treatment or experimental intervention would have constituted an affront to their dignity.