Babes In The News

Warning: Ignore the cutesy title. This is an ugly piece. This article is going to talk about some truly disgusting things, some hideous examples of humanity’s ability to be incredibly inhuman towards each other. Just researching it made me furious and almost physically ill.

  ]]>< ![CDATA[In the past couple of weeks, several babes have been in the news of late. No, not attractive women, but infants and young children. And with one exception, it's not been pretty. In fact, it's been nothing short of nightmare fodder.

Yoav Fogel, age 11; Elad Fogel, age 3; Hadas Fogel, age 4 months.

These children were sleeping in their home when two brave, valiant, stalwart Palestinian freedom fighters crept in and slaughtered them in their beds, along with their parents — Udi Fogel, age 38, and Ruth Fogel, age 35. The noble warriors missed two other children in their beds — Roi, age 8; and Yishai, age 2.And Tamar Fogel, age 12, was visiting friends during the glorious blow for Palestinian freedom; she returned home to find the bodies.

The reaction of the Palestinians was entirely typical — Party on, dude! And Hamas — the terrorist group that is the legitimate government in the Gaza Strip — reacted typically. They condemned the attack — in English. In Arabic, they praised it.

“Jude,” Palestinian Girl, age less than one week.

Days after the massacre of the Fogel family in the Neze Tzuf settlement, a pregnant Palestinian woman arrived at their front gate in a speeding cab. She was in advanced labor, and her baby had its umbilical cord wrapped around her throat. Paramedics and IDF medics immediately sprang into action, saving both mother and child.

Almost literally next door to where the Fogel family — including four-year-old Hadas — was being mourned.

Joseph Maraachli, age 1 year.

Joseph is a Canadian boy with a very serious medical condition. In fact, he will most likely die from his illness. His life could be prolonged with medical treatment, but there is pretty much no hope that he will survive.

His parents wanted him to have a tracheotomy performed and a breathing tube inserted, to give him a bit more time to live. The hospital refused, citing national regulations that gave them the right to deny care in what it considered terminal cases. The parents then decided to take him to another hospital — an American one, if necessary — to keep him alive.

The hospital refused to release him. In essence, they ruled that Joseph had to die, and had to die on their schedule.

The case drew international attention, and exposed an aspect of the Canadian free national health care  system — you don’t get much say in the treatment of you or those in your care. No, the big decisions are made by the government and the hospital. In other words, it’s the Golden Rule in action — them with the gold make the rules. If you decide to let the government pick up the tab, then you don’t get the right to make the big decisions.

That’s when a group of Catholic pro-life activists got involved. Priests For Life got baby Joseph transferred to a Catholic hospital in St. Louis, Missouri, where he will get the tracheotomy his parents want.

Make no mistake. He will, in all likelihood, die. And he might suffer more than if he’d died on the original hospital’s schedule. But his parents’ wishes are being honored, not some government bureaucratic schedule.

Jayden Capewell, age 1 day

This week, one of the top people in England’s National Health Service made a recommendation: babies born before 23 weeks should not be treated, but simply left to die. Dr. Daphne Austin made her report largely in response to the 2009 case of Jayden Capewell.

Sarah Capewell was not having an easy pregnancy. She ended up delivering her son prematurely. Very prematurely — her pregnancy was only 21 weeks, 5 days along.

Which happens to match the record for the most premature baby to ever survive. James Elgin Gill is now a 22-year-old college student and devoted rugby player.

Unfortunately for Jayden, England’s national health care system has “guidelines” for premature infants. If the baby is born before 23 weeks are to be denied any medical treatment and left to die. Of course, these are mere “guidelines” but not rules, but anyone who has ever dealt with a bureaucracy knows what that means — if you don’t follow them, you better be ready to accept any and all consequences on your own, because they will not back up your judgment call. It’s far safer to simply obey them and avoid any difficulties later.

Young Jayden was breathing on his own, his heartbeat was strong, and he was moving his tiny arms and legs. And not only did the hospital refue to give him any treatment, they brought in a bereavement counselor to discuss his funeral — even before he was born.

Within two hours of being born, Jayden died. And even then the hospital didn’t want to fully acknowledge that for those two hours, he had lived. Sarah had to fight to get them to issue him a birth and death certificate, so he could be properly buried.

Again, like in Canada, this is a logical extension of the nationalized health care system. When the government is paying the check, they get to decide how big a check that will be. That means that they can set the prices of procedures — and even if certain treatments should be provided for in the first place.

Yoav Vogel, Elad Vogel, Hadas Vogel, “Jude,” Joseph Maraachli, Jayden Capewell. Four of them dead, thanks to politics. A fifth dying, but not at the direction of bureaucrats and policies. And a sixth alive — because Israelis love life more than Palestinians love death.

We live in a very ugly world.