Conservative Donnybrook

According to a report released by the State Department of the United States, Afghanistan grew $3.1 billion in opium producing poppies during fiscal year 2007.  Much of this staggering sum (around 80%) is said to have benefited the Taliban while local farmers received roughly 20% ($620 million).  During the same time frame the United States spent over $600 million on eradication and alternative growing programs.

With an increase in poppy production year after year since 2001, it seems painfully obvious that the Bush administration’s anti-narcotics crop eradication policy in Afghanistan is a huge failure.  Poppies are the number one crop in Afghanistan, a country near the top of the world’s list of poor nations.  Opium producing poppies from Afghanistan, according to the State Department, account for almost 95% of the heroin currently on the world market.  Continue Reading »

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A story in the Daily Mail tells of little Gabriel who, after repeated abortion attempts, bucked the odds and survived. Doctors had told Mrs. Jones, the twins’ mother,

[Gabriel’s] heart was three times normal size and it was likely he would have a heart attack or a stroke in the womb.

Mrs Jones said: “They told us that if he died, it could be life threatening for his [twin] brother.

“We had to decide whether to end his life and let his brother live, or risk them both.”

They said it would be impossible to keep him alive afterwards as he was so poorly.

It would be kinder to let him die in the womb with his brother by his side than to die alone after being born.

“That made my mind up for me. I wanted the best thing for him.” (outraged emphasis added.)

In this case, “the best thing for him” was deemed to be killing him in the womb so that he could die by his brother’s side.

I take the moral of this story to be two-fold. First, life is indomitable. It has a will to continue and even the sickliest tend to cling to the gift of life. When doctors say that all hope is lost, they often lose track of this truth. Second, doctors are not always right about these life-and-death decisions. When they advise pulling the plug, or removing the feeding tube, or aborting one child because it is “in his best interests,” we should err on the side of life.

See awb’s recent post about people who recover after their feeding tubes are removed.

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