Keeping Options Open
Last month, we all heard about the sad case of Haleigh Poutre, the 11-year-old comatose beating victim the Massachusetts Department of Social “Services” was champing at the bit to kill. Now, court documents reveal that as early as September 19, a mere 6 days after the Department had gained custody of her (and a mere 8 days after she had been brought into the hospital in the first place), the Department was already in juvenile court seeking permission to kill her. Given that Haleigh started breathing the day after the Massachusetts Supreme “Judicial” Court granted the Department its license to kill, it would seem the Department has some ’splainin’ to do. Reached for comment, Department spokesman Xrlq had this to say:
This is a very sad case, and at this juncture, it appears that something went horribly wrong. We are conducting a full investigation into this matter to determine who made the decision to seek permission to take Haleigh off life support prematurely, and why. Until our investigation is complete, we have no further comment except to say we wish Haleigh a full and speedy recovery, and that we had a death penalty so Jason Strickland, the monster who put her in her present state, could get the grisly fate both he and we very nearly inflicted on Haleigh.
Oh, wait, I almost forgot; Xrlq is a blogger in Southern California, not a spokesman for the Massachusetts Department of Social Services. Their actual spokesman spokeswoman spokesperson person of spoke is Denise Monteiro, who had a somewhat different take on the issue:
Social services spokeswoman Denise Monteiro said the agency sought approval to remove Haleigh’s feeding tube and ventilator so they could have “options” in handling her case.
“Just because you get permission to remove life support doesn’t mean you’re going to do it,” she said.
[Emphasis added.]
Who says there is no “culture of death” in this country?
February 7th, 2006 at 12:45 pm
I would call that an affirmative act in a conspiracy to commit murder.
February 7th, 2006 at 2:13 pm
Insane meanie rotten THEOCONS! Are taking over our RIGHTS to Kill People who are DYING anyway. But not like dying in the sense that they’re dying cause like everyone is dying but dying in the sense like, we’re going to do something to make sure they die. Because of the RIGHT TO DIE!
February 7th, 2006 at 2:24 pm
Hmm. If her condition really is better than advertised, this puts is in a bit of a pickle. On the one hand, we can’t have the state prematurely pulling life support just to save expense (or, in this case, to expidite a capital charge); on the other hand, we can’t let the guy who beat her in the first place make her medical decisions either.
Seems to me the correct solution is in the absence of a blood relative or legal guardian not charged with putting her in a near-death state in the first place, appoint a guardian to make such decisions, rather than turning her over to a state bureaucracy.
February 7th, 2006 at 2:30 pm
Correction, not a capital crime; Mass. doesn’t have the death penalty. “Just” a murder charge.
February 7th, 2006 at 3:20 pm
This is why liberals are losing politically. What mercy is there for this child? None, where government bureaucracy is involved. Shame on government. And shame on all those liberals who created this horror of a governnment.
February 8th, 2006 at 8:02 pm
Pendelton:
You’re missing the (still) very real possibility that euthanasia could be the most merciful course of action. We treat our pets better than we treat people.
February 8th, 2006 at 10:39 pm
Nah. We put our pets down because we don’t value animal life nearly as much as some of us value human life. It was bad enough taking Michael Schiavo’s word over what his incapicitated wife’s wishes supposedly were; at least here we had an adult who was capable of making such decisions, and who had languished in her state for years without showing signs of getting better. This time it’s a child, who was much too young to have consented to any such thing, and who also has a decent chance of getting better.
February 9th, 2006 at 11:50 am
If that were truly the case, I suspect we wouldn’t even bother with the trouble and expense of putting our pets down. We’d just let ‘em die a slow, painful death. Or turn them out into the wild and not wash our hands of the whole thing.
The crime here, if there is one, is not pushing for an end to artificial life support; it’s doing so in a case where such support has a reasonable chance of effecting a recovery. If the initial prognosis proved true, and she had no real chance of recovering, then in my estimation, there’s simply nothing wrong here.
February 9th, 2006 at 1:22 pm
Oh, please. I didn’t say we don’t value animal life at all, only that we don’t value it anywhere near as much as we (most of us, anyway) value human life. Euthanizing a pet is cheap and easy, and eliminates the only thing we do care about with animals: needless suffering to prolong a life that we didn’t think was really worth prolonging in the first place.
In Haleigh’s case, I don’t see how anyone can seriously defend something as weasely as “if the initial prognosis proved true.” Maybe it will, maybe it won’t, but how the hell could anyone know when the girl had only been in a coma for a week? You seem to be arguing that Mass’s bizarre eagerness to conclude no hope of recovery will somehow prove justified if, by sheer coincidence, they happen to have guessed correctly.