M a r k D i l l e y

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Living on Less

"An article in today's The Guardian says that 10.6 million children under five die every year, most from easily preventable causes. Meanwhile, here in the US, the news is plastered with an endless barrage of stories about the plight of a woman who is not conscious of her very existence and hasn't been for years. There are people demonstrating -- demonstrating! -- passionately and with apparent conviction, seemingly unaware that they are simply pawns of the rightwing agenda, for the supposed rights of just one person who cannot even feel, who is already dead, for all purposes. Children who are actually suffering, and who are doing so needlessly since they could be helped, are of no concern. Right-to-lifers apparently can only summon compassion for humans who are not capable of suffering: they have to be either unborn or brain-dead. Dying children? Meh. It's obscene. "