The Sun Also Rises… or not

Sun Hudson was a 6 month old baby who died last week in Texas after being removed from life support against her mother’s wishes. How could this happen? Well, in Texas the state may legally order the removal of life support from a patient where a medical ethics board deems the treatment non-beneficial AND the patient is unable to pay.

Too bad Mr. Bush and Mr. DeLay didn’t have the foresight to rally the troops against such an obviously anti-Life piece of legislation. Somehow, the existence of this trash must have slipped under the radar. However, you would think that given that Tom DeLay is a congressman from Texas and G.W. Bush signed the law as governor of the state, that they might have had some inkling that this rule was in place.

Too bad for Sun’s mom that he was not as much of a political grandstanding opportunity as Terry Schiavo.

I find it also curious that the current administration is pushing for medical malpractice reform to restrict large damage awards. Terry Schiavo’s family would be in financial ruins right now were it not for the large malpractice award which has funded her decade plus of medical care (and if her parents are successful, her next decade as well). Further, assuming the malpractice award was limited, the recent bankruptcy legislation would have made it very hard for the destitute Schiavo’s to get out from under the mountain of medical bills they would owe.

The word “hypocrisy” doesn’t really seem to adequately cover this situation.