The Value of Life

April 3, 2004

The Value of Life

We were engrossed in the Terri Shiavo case this past two weeks most of were sickened about

how politicians wasted time and money on what would be in normal case be a family decision.
What made this situation so important? What made this family so different?

Your answer is as good as mine. However, while my husband and I were listening to Mike Malloy show on Air America he mentioned a story about a six month old little boy named Sun Hudson. Sun Hudson had a fatal genetic disorder which involved the development of lungs.

His mother Wanda felt also that he too would get better in time just like Mrs. Shiavo’s mother. They both could not function with out assistance of machines. Both were victims of George W. Bush politics. Both had laws that would seal or in one case prolong their fate.

So what are the differences between their stories? We all know about Terri Shiavo’s story it has been going on for fifteen years. Little Sun’s story did not leave the city of Houston.

Mrs. Schindler had the support of many powerful attorneys, a litany of famous faces waying in on her case, reporters and clergyman across the country. Ms. Hudson was prevented from having reporters to show her son’s suffering, she had one attorney and no famous faces by her side. The biggest difference between the two cases is that Mrs. Schindler had resources to keep her daughter alive such as the courts and politicians. Ms. Hudson was told to by the Texas Children’s Hospital that her son would be disconnected from life support by 2pm whether she liked it or not. In the state of Texas there is a law called the Futile Care Law in which George W. Bush signed in to law while he was Governor. The law states (and I am paraphrasing), that if a patient is not progressing from treatment or terminal the hospital has the right to withdraw life support and the family has ten days to find another facility that would be willing to take that patient.

Terri’s law was rushed through the state house in Florida and states that if there was no living will or written instructions or family can’t agree then the government will take over. (Once again, I am paraphrasing).

Little Sun nor Terri Shiavo would not have been cured in time that one thing that we do know. So why the three ring circus in Florida and none in Texas? Where were Fox News and all the rest of them when this hospital in Texas decided to pull the plug on this little boy’s life? Terri Shiavo had a choice she stated that she did not want to live in a vegetative state. Little Sun did not have that choice. I can write about the similarities and differences of these stories forever.

But there is one that can’t be denied ..............

Little Sun was black

Terri Schiavo was white.

Was the outcry really for white life?

Something to think about…..