The right-wing of American politics is making Haleigh Poutre into a cause. I just noticed on a Google News search, links to the same story, entitled "Save Haleigh," on a dozen or so different right-wing web sites.  What is remarkable here is that, by doing this, conservative activists are abstracting the discussion away from Haleigh and what her real condition and interests are, to a universalized "right-to-life" ideal.  And they are doing this with almost no knowledge of Haleigh’s real medical condition right now.  If there is something that is true for all of us commenting on Haleigh’s situation, it is that none of us, save a small number of lawyers and judges and state employees, have actually seen any of her medical records or the details of her case.  We are all operating from a position of fundamental ignorance, and that should lend a certain humility to our analyses and arguments.

    But the conservative activists are not interested in humility, they are interested in generating political momentum for other cases and issues.  They are not interested in Haleigh, in and of herself.  They are using her for political purposes. And that is why their arguments cannot be trusted.

    That is not to say that there is no principled argument in favor of keeping her alive.  There is.  But it is not being made by the purveyors of the "Save Haleigh" movement.

     There is an interesting contradiction here as well.  The "Save Haleigh" people are quick to attack the state bureaucracy while saying less about the primary failure of the adults in Haleigh’s life.  What happened to "family values"?  Or do they only count when we have to discipline homosexuals?   

    If we take "family values" seriously, and Confucius certainly did, then we would agree with this editorial for the Lowell Sun, in Lowell, Massachusetts:

In the world of Just-Don’t-Get-It, Gov. Mitt Romney earned the title of king this week with comments regarding the case of Haleigh Poutre, an 11-year-old girl who is in a vegetative state.

She was allegedly beaten nearly to death by her stepfather and late mother.

The case prompted our exiting, and politically ascending, governor to question the judgment of employees at the state’s Department of Social Services.

First off, the whole idea that attention should be averted from the suspected criminal in this case, stepfather Jason Strickland, is at best, ill-advised, and at worst, cynical.

It seems clear that Romney’s attention to this case has its roots in politics rather than policy.

    Their key point here is that primary responsibility for Haleigh’s demise rests with the step-parents (they mistakenly suggest that her "mother" is dead; her birth mother is alive, her stepmother is dead) and with her birth parents.  DSS is responding to those  primary failures.  Of course, there may be ways in which DSS could have done a better job and prevented Haleigh’s near-death.  But the solution is not to castigate the agency, but to give it more support.  In these sorts of cases the state does have a compelling interest to protect children, and we, as a society, must recognize and fully support that mission.  How much was governor Romney and the right wing supporting DSS before this happened?

   A similar point is made in today’s Boston Globe by Joan Vennochi:

The action Romney called for — creation of a commission — is minimal and comes four months too late. This battered child has been in critical condition since September. Follow the timeline and it appears that Haleigh’s tragic story caught Romney’s interest right after it caught the interest of "right to life" advocates.
…
It is also fair to wonder whether different gubernatorial priorities might reduce the likelihood of error in the future. Put "Romney" and "Department of Social Services" into the Boston Globe database and you don’t get much. What mostly comes up are stories about agency consolidation as a way to increase efficiency and cut costs.

    The politicization of Haleigh’s case by the right-wing could well be working against her interests.  What if she were to die of her injuries? That is, what if her heart and lungs both just stopped?  What if she were just at the end of what is physically possible?  At this point, because of the political pressure being brought to bear, doctors would pound her with defibrillators and respirators.  They would use "heroic measures" to revive her, according to this Boston Globe story:

Haleigh Poutre, the brain-damaged girl whose fate has been debated in the highest levels of state government, will receive emergency life-saving measures from hospital staff if her heart or lungs stop working.

A spokeswoman for the state Department of Social Services, which has custody of Haleigh, said yesterday that among its revised requests to the courts last week was that the agency no longer sought to enforce a ”do not resuscitate" order.

    "Do not resuscitate" (DNR) orders are different than a feeding tube.  DNR would say: in the event that this person dies, if her heart and lungs stop functioning, we should recognize the finality of that death and not attempt to ‘bring her back."  A feeding tube, on the other hand, says: this person is alive in many ways, her heart and lungs work on their own, but she cannot feed herself; and a tube helps accomplish that.  Now, a feeding tube is generally understood, in US medical ethics, as an "extraordinary measure."  We could debate that; I personally do not believe that a tube, in and of itself, is as "extraordinary" as many believe.  But  DNR orders are, under almost all circumstances, perfectly reasonable.   Why should we not take cardiac or respiratory arrest as death in this case?

     But Haleigh’s actual condition, which, I repeat, none of us can be sure of, is not what the right wing is interested in.  They, and Governor Romney, are looking to the next election.  And that is the wrong criteria to use in assessing Haleigh’s care.