So, another hospital decided to take another baby off life support.

The hospital made the choice.

That's twice in, maybe, over two months.

Texas law (signed by GWBush) works like this:

Once a hospital decides to <Right to Lifer's language>murder an innocent child</Right to Lifer's language>, the family has ten days to find another facility that will take the child. If none will take the child (NOTE: the law isn't specifically about children. It’s that only children seemed to be affected by it) then the hospital is legally covered for the <Right to Lifer's language>murder an innocent child</Right to Lifer's language>.

Here's a couple of quotes from today's paper that, I believe, will put everything in perspective:

"Despite pleas from the infant's parents and community activists, no other hospital had been willing to take Knya."

 And

"A hospital ethics committee decided Friday to remove her from life support on May 9, against her parents' wishes.

 

Texas Children's had already twice refused to assume Knya's case. Officials there reviewed the infant's charts and said they could do nothing more than what Memorial Hermann is doing."

Here's the link to the local story: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7733850/

No Tom DeLay for these babies. No special congressional action. No President (or Governor) cutting his vacation short to fly back to work to take some kind of spectacularly useless action.

I wonder why. I wonder what these two babies could possibly have in common. Besides being the recipient of "state sponsored euthanasia."

CLARIFICATION:

My beef is with this law AND the gigantic hypocrites that claim to be part of this "culture of life."

Look, maybe both of these children were better served by being pulled from life support (in fact, Knya died *after* the hospital began the process of getting her life support terminated, but *before* it had been pulled). What bother's me is the *hospital* is making the decision unilaterally. And what is your legal recourse when this happens to someone you love? Ten days to convince another hospital that the one pulling the plug is wrong.

Right.

And I bet all of those hospitals that *might* say yes take everybody's insurance and are modestly affordable.

As to the hypocrites, where is their moral outrage? Why are these lives not worth the same as an abiznorted fetus or Terri? Why is this law tolerated by the same people that find it ok to kill doctor?

Again, I really don't want those lunatics on the same side of the street with me. What I do want is for those people to explain why they aren't.

At the end of the day, I'm wondering who asked for this legislation. What was the big push, the clarion call? Call me paranoid, but I'm betting the same group that supported this law is behind the big push for tort reform. Less rights, less legal recourse. I'm sure the parents of these two little girls are comforted by the knowledge that less government is good for business.

[ran across this snippet on Salon.com]

Several Planned Parenthood locations across the country have hit upon a clever way to profit from the throngs of protesters who picket abortion clinics -- a fundraising drive in which the clinic receives a donation for each picketer who shows up. Under the Pledge-a-Picket program, as described in a recent article in the Planned Parenthood newsletter, supporters pledge small amounts -- a quarter to a dollar -- per anti-choice protester. "It's like sponsoring a runner in a charity marathon," the newsletter says. Despite the small pledges, the money adds up for the clinics because "the picketers never go away."

The idea is that the Pledge-a-Picket program creates a "no-win" situation (or is it "no-choice"?) for the protesters: Their presence actually benefits the very organization they're protesting. The Planned Parenthood clinic in Waco, Texas, has hung a sign outside that constantly updates how much money it has raised under the program, so picketers can see that their efforts are backfiring. In the last two years, the protesters have helped the clinic raise more than $18,000, which the clinic has spent on an assistance fund for low-income women in the community.

- http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room