A feeding tube has been removed in Florida, a baby in Houston was removed from a respirator by the State, and a friend of my daughter had her mother removed from life support yesterday here in Dallas.
I am Pro-Life, and all three of these events effect me. Terri Schiavo's case certainly, but also the 5 month old infant in Houston who suffered birth defects. Against the mother's wishes, the hospital decided to terminate life support, as a law passed by the Texas State Legislature and signed into law by then Gov. George Bush, allowed (the law basically allows hospitals to "pull the plug" when the insurance money runs out). The infant could not live without a respirator, but might live indefinitely on one. The Corporate/State partnership pulled the plug. There were no protests.
My daughter's friend's mother was brain dead following a car accident. Does the soul escape the body when brain functions cease?
In all three cases, only medical technology was able to keep the heart beating and the lungs breathing. In Florida, that technology was fairly basic: a feeding tube. But in all three cases, remove the technology (artifice), and the individual dies (quickly in the case of the infant and the mother, slowly in the case of Mrs. Schiavo). As we used to say, "Nature has run her course."
100,000 innocent Iraqi civilians (presuming anyone is innocent) have died in our war to bring freedom to Iraq (remember, we've changed our rational for going to war. "No WMD's? Let Freedom march!").
100,000 dead, and no protests from the Religious Right. One severely brain-damaged woman in Florida, and thousands march, but not for an infant in Houston. But then, Texas isn't a "swing" state.
It was Joseph Stalin (The "Liberator" of Eastern Europe) who remarked, "The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of thousands is a statistic."
And for a baby dying in his mother's arms, gasping for breath? Silence.
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