American Values
How would you rather die, if you were a terminal hospital patient caught in natural disaster? Would you rather die painlessly and quickly, or be dragged through chaos and danger to who knows what horrible kind of death? A death like this perhaps :
It’s a no-brainer – give me the morphine and let me die quickly and with some dignity.
That was also the view of some doctors in NOLA during Katrina, actions which are now being attacked by the same group, Not Dead Yet, that was behind the Terri Schiavo right-to-life case.
What would these people have done instead? Dragged these people, on the edge of death, with their IV’s and equipment, down several flights of stairs, through polluted, sewage-ridden floodwaters, to the Convention Centre? Would they have just left them to die in the heat? Or would they have forced those doctors and nurses to stay, thus killing more people for no good reason? Instead of blaming the doctors for their mercy, they should quit these stupid right wing agitations and give those who need help now the assistance they need. The death toll is still rising:
Though not quantifiable in the orthodox fashion, because so many area health agencies are still in disarray, a belief exists among many here that the natural mortality rate of New Orleanians — whether still in the city or relocated — has increased dramatically since, and perhaps because of, Katrina.
The daily newspaper has seen a rise in reported deaths. Local funeral homes are burying just as many people as they did last year, though the population has decreased. Families say that their kin who had been in good health are dying, and attribute that to the stress brought on by the hurricane, flooding and relocations.
Funny how they can find the energy to campaign about the dead and not the living. The right to life only extends to embryos and terminal patients: fuck the Katrina victims, they’re on their own:
In response to the draft report, a White House spokesperson told the New York Times that ?President Bush was now focused on the future.? However, this does not seem to translate to relief for Katrina survivors. On Feb. 7 about 4,500 survivors across the country were told to evacuate their hotel rooms because the Federal Emer gency Management Agency would no longer be paying for their hotel stays. The rest?occupants of at least 20,000 hotel rooms, according to the Associated Press, were given extensions of only one to three weeks. A judge on Feb. 13 upheld FEMA?s decision to drop survivors from the program.
Protests were held across the country to denounce the evictions. In New York survivors, with the support of legal advocates and solidarity activists, have won a reprieve on their eviction from hotels in the city. Using a city law stating that legal evictions must be done through court proceedings and by court order, 17 families at the Radisson won an indefinite stay on their eviction. Armed with that victory, activists on Feb. 13 went to hotels across the city to distribute legal fact sheets to let survivors know their rights, while legal aid lawyers filed the same motion won at the Radisson to extend to all the hotels.
While evictions continue across the country, leaving many with no place to go, FEMA trailers continue to sit unused. Activists with the People?s Hurricane Relief Fund (PHRF) rallied on Feb. 12 at a FEMA trailer site on a lot in the New Orleans? Eighth Ward, where approximately 100 such uninhabited trailers reside. The rally was to demand that the trailers be made immediately available to all those facing eviction. According to the group?s press release, ?The trailers are apparently hooked up to power and have plumbing, but are not being used to provide much-needed shelter for the 10,000-plus New Orleans residents that have come back to rebuild their homes and their lives.?
Tags: US Politics Katrina New Orleans Right to Life Hypocrisy
