Priorities, priorities

22 March 2005

While the Republicans considered Terry Schiavo’s life important enough to cut short President Bush’s vacation, Sun Hudson, a six-month-old terminally ill baby, became the first infant in the US authorized to have his life support discontinued against his parents’ wishes. The hospital wouldn’t even honor the mother’s invitation for the media to see the allegedly-conscious baby. The law permitting this euthanasia, the Texas Futile Care Law, was drafted after negotiations with National Right to Life, and signed by one Governor George W. Bush.

Of course, Schiavo’s care is being subsidized by a trust fund established by a malpractice settlement. Hudson was not so lucky.

Liberals believe that your life belongs to yourself. Conservatives of a bygone era believed that your life belongs to God. The people who call themselves “conservative” today, it seems, believe that your life belongs to Mammon.

via Mark A. R. Kleiman

• Later: C is for Chance
• Earlier: Gender and friendship: follow-up file