Wednesday, February 16, 2005
A troubling juxtaposition
A judge has just ruled that a Texas hospital can take a baby, born in September with an almost-always-fatal genetic abnormality, can be removed from life-support. According to this story in the Houston Chronicle, "Texas Children's doctors have said they believed `it was immoral to subject a terminally ill child to unnecessary life-sustaining medical procedures.'"
The report is skimpy, but a key issue seems to be whether any insurer or hospital wants to pay for the (arguably quixotic) attempt to keep the child alive. The hosital in its case claimed that of "40 facilities with neonatal intensive-care units across the country ... not one is willing to accept the baby as a patient".
The mother is black, and according to the article, there are questions about her "mental competence". She has been fighting to keep her child on life-support; the hospital wants to pull the plug.
I find myself thinking of the Florida case, in which Jeb Bush has been grand-standing for religious right votes by intervening in a similar case to override the wishes of a brain-dead woman and her husband to terminate life-support.
They are different cases, to be sure, but a similar principle is involved: that of being so blindly "pro-life" that you refuse to recognize when even the hope of life is long past---and, as a consequence, divert health care resources from active lives that could still be improved or extended.
The differences?
1. The infant is not *yet* brain-dead; his effective death is not-quite guaranteed, while the Floridian woman is actually brain-dead, and thus completely gone, without any hoep of resuscitation ever.
2. Saving money and resources has been the key issue in the debate over the infant's life; abstract issues of euthanasia are the key issue in the debate of the woman's "life".
3. One case involves a white woman. The other a black infant.
So, will the usual cast of pro-life right-wing Christians line up to defend the baby?
Or are they a bunch of flim-flam artists?
The report is skimpy, but a key issue seems to be whether any insurer or hospital wants to pay for the (arguably quixotic) attempt to keep the child alive. The hosital in its case claimed that of "40 facilities with neonatal intensive-care units across the country ... not one is willing to accept the baby as a patient".
The mother is black, and according to the article, there are questions about her "mental competence". She has been fighting to keep her child on life-support; the hospital wants to pull the plug.
I find myself thinking of the Florida case, in which Jeb Bush has been grand-standing for religious right votes by intervening in a similar case to override the wishes of a brain-dead woman and her husband to terminate life-support.
They are different cases, to be sure, but a similar principle is involved: that of being so blindly "pro-life" that you refuse to recognize when even the hope of life is long past---and, as a consequence, divert health care resources from active lives that could still be improved or extended.
The differences?
1. The infant is not *yet* brain-dead; his effective death is not-quite guaranteed, while the Floridian woman is actually brain-dead, and thus completely gone, without any hoep of resuscitation ever.
2. Saving money and resources has been the key issue in the debate over the infant's life; abstract issues of euthanasia are the key issue in the debate of the woman's "life".
3. One case involves a white woman. The other a black infant.
So, will the usual cast of pro-life right-wing Christians line up to defend the baby?
Or are they a bunch of flim-flam artists?
