Republican Hypocracy over Terri Schiavo Case

Sun Hudson, a six-month-old boy with a fatal congenital disease, died Thursday after a Texas hospital, over his mother's objections, withdrew his feeding tube. Unlike Terri Schiavo this little baby was not brain damaged. He was fully conscious right up to the end. Unlike Terri Schiavo whose cerebral cortex is so damaged that her doctors say she will not feel hunger, little baby Sun had a fully functional cortex and felt the pangs of hunger right up until he died in his mother’s arms drenched in her tears. This was done in accordance with a bill former Texas Governor George W. Bush signed into law in 1999 allowing hospitals to pull the plug on patients who could not pay their hospital bills and the hospital did not believe they would get better. (Note section 166.039 of that law which designates the spouse as having primary decision making responsibility over parents of an adult despite Republicans' claim now—Terri’s husband is also her legal guardian which the law also recognizes as a higher decision maker than the parents) Why did George W. Bush fly back from one of his many vacations to sign a bill bent on keeping Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube re-inserted against her husband’s wishes and according to 6 witnesses her own wishes not to be kept alive if she became a vegetable and not give a care to the little six-month old black and poor baby who was killed by hospital officials against his mother’s wishes? Why hasn’t President Bush or the Republican Leadership in Congress tried to save patients like baby Sun Hudson or other patients who are going to be killed against their loved ones wishes? Well, to understand that you only need to read about the memo that the Republican leadership in Congress sent to Republican politicians in Congress saying that they were going to use the Schiavo case to try to win votes in the 2006 midterm elections so that they wouldn’t lose control of either house of Congress. They are not interested in the sanctity of life or they would be fighting this Texas statute that George W. Bush signed into law. Rather they are only interested in using the Schiavo case to get votes in 2006. Another victim of this Texas Law Bush signed into law is a swarthy Greek man who the hospital is trying to kill despite his family’s wishes for him to stay alive. The family is franticly trying to keep him alive. Bush and the Republicans aren’t meeting to keep him alive. His family can’t afford to pay the huge cost of healthcare so it is alright to kill him just as it was alright to kill baby Sun Hudson. Read this Houston newspaper’s coverage of the Texas law that allows hospitals to kill patients despite their families’ wishes. More interesting is that National Right to Life, the organization that is helping to lead the fight to keep a Florida hospital from removing life support for Terri Schiavo, helped write the Texas law. Texas newspapers are covering this but TV and radio news are not. Why won’t CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN or Fox News (read Faux News) report on these aspects of the case? Well their parent corporations know which side of the bread is buttered. Why is it okay for hospital’s to kill poor black and Mediterranean patients against their family’s consent but is not okay for a white upper-middleclass woman who according to her husband and 5 of her friends asked not to be kept alive in a persistent vegetative state? Why will Congress open up for special session to save one woman (at a cost of millions of taxpayers dollars), but allow others who are poorer (and of darker complexion) to die according to a law George W. Bush signed in 1999? It’s all about votes and money. These politicians don’t give a damn about life. They just want to remain in power, and will do whatever they can to keep that power.
As a follow-up after signing the Terri Schiavo act into law, President Bush went back to his vacation in Crawford, Texas. The state where hospitals continue to pull the plug on patients who are too poor. The Republican Leadership in Congress also went home on Easter Break. No effort has or will be made to combat the Texas law that allows hospitals to end the lives of their poorest patients. The sanctity of life vs. the lure of votes. Votes won!