After a federal judge rejected a request to restore Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube, Scott McClellan, President Bush’s spokesman, said, “The president’s view has always been that we should be on the side of defending life at all stages, and that includes people that are incapacitated or people with disabilities.”

Not exactly.

Less than a week before the Schiavo ruling, five-month-old Sun Hudson was removed from his life-sustaining machines in a hospital in Texas, the home state of U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, and President Bush. Hudson was born with a genetic disorder and was kept alive by machines his whole life. The hospital treating him concluded there was no point in sustaining his care, and Hudson was disconnected from his machines. He was five months old when he died. This all happened because of a 1999 law signed by then-Texas Gov. Bush.

According to The Associated Press, “The 1999 Advance Directives Act allows for a patient’s surrogate to make end-of-life decisions and spells out how to proceed if a hospital or other health provider disagrees with a decision to maintain or halt life-sustaining treatment.” If Tom DeLay, other Republican congressional leaders and Bush are so concerned about life, where were they only days before Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube was disconnected?

They were keeping quiet. The Republicans and the administration couldn’t score political points even if they wanted to, because they would have had to oppose a bill Bush signed. Very inconvenient. Instead, they decided to politicize the suffering of a poor woman in Florida. According to a Republican talking-points memo, the Schiavo case “is an important moral issue and the pro-life base will be excited that the Senate is debating this important issue. … This is a great political issue because Sen. Nelson of Florida has already refused to become a co-sponsor and this is a tough issue for Democrats.”

America deserves better leadership.

Robin Stone

Assistant Professor

Music