January 19, 2006

Kill her quick, she's moving

This is very bad:

A comatose girl beaten with a baseball bat is responding to medical stimuli, officials said Wednesday, a day after Massachusetts' highest court ruled the state could take her off life support.

The state, which has custody, had asked that Haleigh Poutre's ventilator and feeding tube be withdrawn after doctors said she was in an irreversible vegetative state.

Her alleged piece of dirt stepfather allegedly hit her with the bat. He is now in the interesting position of trying to keep her tubes in place, because if the state pulls the tube and she dies, he will be charged with her murder. But as the state is her guardian, the state (specifically the Massachusetts Department of Social Services) can ignore his wishes, finish the job he started of murdering Haleigh, and then throw him in jail for it.

It's not that I'm decrying the rough justice against the stepfather, Jason Strickland. Hell, hang him up for a pinata.

But the state is acting as his accomplice.

This really frightens me. The state shouldn't be pulling the tubes on eleven year old girls. Unlike the Schiavo case, not only has Haleigh not told anyone of her true wishes, but she legally can't make these kind of decisions. There should be a presumption that people, that children, even brain-damaged orphans, ought to live.

But the social services bureaucrats in the State of Massachusetts have decided she must die, and they are preparing to take affirmative acts to carry that decision out.

If she dies, however, the state's accomplice in her murder will not die. Massachusetts decided this year that murderers will not face the death penalty.

Keep Haleigh in your prayers. And keep America in your prayers.

H/t: Alarming News.

Cross-posted at Patterico's Pontifications.

By See-Dubya at 02:42 AM | |