Our culture of life

The doctors in Texas killed Tirhas Habtegiris because she could not pay her medical bills. They didn't stab her or shoot her or push her off a cliff or anything like that. But they unplugged her from the ventilator that kept her alive, and fifteen minutes later she had suffocated to death. Unlike Terri Schiavo, Tirhas Habtegiris was responsive, conscious, and expressed a wish to be kept alive for long enough to say goodbye to her Mother, who needed to travel from Africa.

No last-minute presidential appeal for her.

This story is a few weeks old. I didn't see it until Kevin Drum linked this Slate article by Stephen Landsburg titled "Do the Poor Deserve Life Support?" I don't think I can improve on Kevin's description of it as "condescending, juvenile, obtuse, and soul cankered", except to point out that it makes a nice companion piece to an earlier Landsburg column titled "Imagine Terri were a Toaster".