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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\u2014such as sentience, rational capacity, or human flourishing\u2014however, were either absent or not threatened by continued treatment, creating an apparent tension in the court\u2019s reasoning: although withdrawal is justified as serving the infants\u2019 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.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1186\/s12910-026-01506-3","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,16]],"date-time":"2026-06-16T02:14:29Z","timestamp":1781576069000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/springer_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Dignity as recognition respect: lessons from the cases of Charlie Gard, Alfie Evans and Isaiah Haastrup"],"prefix":"10.1186","volume":"27","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0007-7540-149X","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Nanette","family":"Ryan","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"297","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,16]]},"reference":[{"key":"1506_CR1","unstructured":"Justice Francis. 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