Right to Die? Let "Dad" Decide

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/06/national/06coma.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1134490014-j+A3rpMyRt5l2oDItrB9JQ

Makes you wonder where the Terry Schiavo life-at-any-price people are now, doesn't it? Seems the State of Massachusetts wants to discontinue both breathing tube and feeding tube on a comatose 11 year old girl. Which, by the way, is just fine with me. I think they should have done it for Terry and I think that they should do it for Haleigh. I also think that there should be as much hue-and-cry for Haleigh as there was for Terry. Call me silly, but once again it appears the pretty, the white, and the middle-to-upper classers get the lion's share of attention from the news media, the right-wingers, the politicians and the hand-wringers. Maybe it's easier for Americans to identify with a beautiful, socially adept, reasonably intelligent young woman who may or may not have an eating disorder than it is for them to stretch their imagination and pretend for a moment that they could have anything at all in common with an abused child who's been made a ward of the state because her own family couldn't seem to keep their hands (or feet) off of her.

On second thought, I hope the world ignores her impending death as well as they apparently ignored her short and painful life. Nothing that happened to Haleigh was deemed unusual enough to be considered newsworthy when she was alive, let's grant her the only remaining kindness we can still show her and let her die sans our attention as well.