Oh, I Almost Forgot About the Murder in Texas

You will recall the President's hypocrisy in the Terri Schiavo case extended all the way to a Texas statute that he signed into law during those easygoing years in the Governor's mansion. Last year, I wrote about the case of a Texas child--also brain-dead--who was taken off a respirator in Houston because her family couldn't pay for hospital care.

Well, now it's happened again--this time to a woman who was fully conscious. From Daily Kos:

Tirhas Habtegiris, a young woman and legal immigrant from Africa, was CONSCIOUS and responsive when removed from a respirator and allowed to die. Let me rephrase that: She was killed by doctors who removed the ventilator keeping her alive. And this action was fully legal under Bush's "economic considerations" law. Her body was ravaged by cancer, but she was alert. She was responsive.

"They handed me this letter on December 1st. and they said, we're going to give you 10 days so on the 11th day, we're going to pull it out," said her brother Daniel Salvi.

Salvi was stunned to get this hand-delivered notice invoking a complicated and rarely used Texas law where a doctor is "not obligated to continue" medical treatment ....

She wasn't white. Politicians did not speculate on her diagnosis via video tape. Conservative religious zealots did not picket the hospital. She didn't have insurance. Ventilator treatment is expensive. Baylor did not want to incur any more expenses. So they removed a conscious woman from a respirator.

Tirhas still responded and was conscious. She was waiting one person. "She wanted to get her mom over here or to get to her mom so she could die in her mom's arms," says her cousin Meri Tesfay. Ten days was not enough time, they say, to get a mother from Africa to America.

Ain't Texas grand? Don't you just love "the culture of life"? (And don't you wonder why it's the pro-choice liberal who cares about these people?)