The Cost of the Culture of Life

John Stewart, of "The Daily Show" who is arguably one of the most incisive news commentators in these difficult times of religious right ascendency, and he does a COMEDY show for fun and well... I guess some pay too, had something like this to say about the Schiavo case:

"Congress today announced that they passed a bill to ensure, guarantee, and enhance lives for all Americans. No, it wasn't Universal Health Care. It was the Terry Shiavo bill."

And on a similar note, I read in my local paper today that a shelter for abused women is having its funding cut in half and will have to refuse services to many needy women seeking physical shelter and safety from violently abusive relationships.

Lets consider the consequences that if a small shelter in the midwest was losing funding, so probably were hundreds more shelters, maybe thousands, in places like Indianapolis, New York, Los Angeles, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Miami, Boston, Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Nashville, Seattle, San Francisco, Louisville, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Houston, Denver, Baltimore, Newark.... (I wonder how many city after city after city I can mention to make a point about how many shelters are affected by the lack or cutting of funding.)

Consider how many people will DIE because of that.... women forced to stay with abusive men, and even indirectly, how many children will be severely psychologically damaged because they are forced to live in that abusive household, and whether that might cost more lives, perhaps with those youth as victims, perhaps because they might become so disturbed/damaged as to participate in destructive activities when they got older.

It might be a stretch to say that about any one case, but when one considers how many hundreds, thousands of families will be affected by these cutbacks, there is no doubt that a significant number of lives will be lost.

And the same politicians who supported legislation to "keep Terri Shiavo alive" are the same politicians who support the cutting of these funds.

So much for the culture of life.