Mike Huckabee: Removing Life Support From Brain-Dead Teen Will Lead to Nazi Concentration Camps.
by Liam O'Connor
Mike
Huckabee has claimed that allowing doctors to remove life-support from a
brain-dead teenager in California will lead to the establishment of
Nazi-style concentration camps and forced abortions like those seen in
China.
13-year
old Jahi McMath was declared brain-dead last month after what should
have been a routine operation on her tonsils. Doctors have told her
family that she technically died several weeks ago. She remains on
life-support and has been released to the custody of her mother as of
this morning.
Now
Huckabee (an ordained pastor) has weighed in on the issue, despite
admitting that he has no medical knowledge and does not fully understand
McMath's condition. However this has not stopped him making a
hysterical claim about the consequences of allowing McMath's life
support to be removed.
Huckabee told his viewers:
[box
type="shadow"]"Every life has value and worth. There is no such person
who is disposable. . . The road that starts that way in deciding that
some lives have less value and are unworthy of protection, that leads to
a culture that tolerates the undeserved killing of over 55 million
unborn children in this country. It leads to China's birth policy. . .
It's also that culture that allowed the Nazis to hideously justify the
savage slaughter of millions of Jews."[/box]
The
Nazi program of extermination was based on pseudo-scientific claims,
myths of race and blood purity and social-Darwinism. The invocation of
the Holocaust has been used by the reactionary right to attack the
Affordable Care Act, stem-cell research and abortion. Now it is being
used to invade the privacy of a family going through an unimaginable
scenario. These glib and ridiculous claims are an insult to the memories
of the millions of people who perished in the gas chambers of Auschwitz
and Treblinka, and should not be used to advocate avowedly religious
goals. After all, Christianity has a very bad history and an even worse
conscience when it comes to its relationship with Nazism and the
Holocaust.
It
is important to remember that no one at any point asked for the former
governor to comment on this case. McMath is, fortunately, not suffering
anymore. However, she is merely existing at this point; she is not
living. As far as anyone knows, McMath's family have not publicly
contemplated removing her life-support. If they do, it should be an
entirely private and family affair, with no outside interference. This
is a medical issue, not a theological one.
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