Earlier today I read that a woman from mid-Wales who is bed-ridden with fibromyalgia and also suffers from Crohn’s disease, epilepsy and depression has been refused an appeal in the High Court against extradition to the USA on charges of having abducted her six-year-old daughter twelve years ago. The abduction followed the withdrawal of her business visa, the renewal of which she assumed would be a formality but as it turned out, the authorities decided there were too many of them in circulation. She fled the country fearing that she would be suddenly deported without any of her children, and after the daughter was returned, the two lost contact. However, they have since resumed contact and she also has an amicable relationship with her former American partner. (Her own story is here.)

This isn’t the whole story; the prosecutors in Pennsylvania started alleging charges of obtaining money by deception, “relating to her time working at a US magazine”, which Prosser denies. However, the fact remains that Prosser is bed-ridden, has persistent pain controlled with morphine, and a colostomy bag following damage to her digestive system caused by the Crohn’s. She also requires a stair-lift, bath-lift and a specialised wheelchair. The American penal system’s record in dealing with severely disabled inmates is not a good one — in 2004, Andrew Magbie, a ventilator-dependent quadriplegic in Washington, DC, died, having received a short prison sentence for possessing marijuana (which he used to control the spasms caused by his spinal cord injury) and for riding in a car in which someone else carried a loaded gun (which he could, by definition, not use). His sentence was 10 days long; he died four days later, following a “pop-off”, i.e. the dislodgement of his ventilator pipe from his tracheostomy. He required round-the-clock nursing care, as do all vent-dependent quads, and clearly nobody was there to put his pipe back on once it had become dislodged.

Liz Prosser is not that disabled, in terms of being able to move her body and breathe on her own, but Andrew Magbie was not bed-ridden either. People do not become bed-ridden because they want to be, but because their bodies cannot cope with activity or because they cannot sit up for very long (or at all). Given that they allow this to happen to one of their own citizens over a petty drug charge, how on earth can they be trusted — whatever their assurances (and our government thinks such assurances mean anything when they come from dictators, also) — to look after a severely disabled British citizen? The truth is, they cannot and should not be.

Who is the victim in all this, anyway? Nobody. All the parties to the “abduction” have made up, including the father (who was never married to Prosser). The only offended party is the state of Pennsylvania: prosecutors with unfinished business who want to rack up their conviction rates, which seems to be par for the course in much of the USA. In any case, when a mother is threatened with permanent separation from her six-year-old daughter by a state which is playing games with her, it is quite natural that she should want to preserve their relationship. In the event, she lost contact with her daughter for years and did not see her for many years afterwards, and was imprisoned in this country before being released on bail; she was unable to travel outside Wales even before she became ill (travelling anywhere is impossible now, of course).

There is no reason this woman should be sent to the USA. The “suicide risk” is a red herring; the fact is that the journey to the airport would be a risk to her health, never mind the flight. The reason this action is even being considered is because we have a government which is so in awe of American power and has such a miserable sense of the decline of British power that it will never openly defy American wishes or demands, which, of course, the British government did do during the Cold War and which other countries in Europe continue to do. The Labour government has no convictions and no courage, and will readily betray British citizens to appease imaginary American wrath. I really do hope that they do not have a majority after the coming election.

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• Social-worker bashers’ wilful blindness
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• PIP won’t cut the disability budget