Hey, where's Tom DeLay? Where's Randall Terry?

(4/28/05 - HOUSTON) — At five months old, a local baby girl is already caught in the middle of a life or death debate. The little girl has leukemia and a rare type of flesh-eating disease, and her family is fighting to keep their baby alive.

Little Knya Dismuke Howard is only five months old. She is still fighting for her life at Memorial Hermann Hospital....

Knya's father Charles Howard ... says Knya's doctors don't want to continue treatment....

Memorial Hermann Hospital officials released a statement that reads in part, "In certain unfortunate cases where the death of a patient is unavoidable and medical experts believe that continued treatment will only increase pain and suffering, the physician may ask for a meeting of the Committee for Review of Medically Inappropriate/Futile Treatment. That committee is meeting today to examine the case of little Knya." ...

And in San Antonio:

...Southeast Baptist Hospital notified the family of Spiro Nikolouzos last week that doctors plan to turn of his ventilator and stop feeding him intravenously May 3. The notification followed the hospital ethics committee's determination that continued care would be futile.

"Can you believe a hospital's trying to do this again?" Nikolouzos' wife, Jannette, said. "It's very aggravating -- I never thought this would happen again."

Jannette Nikolouzos said she and an adult son will travel to San Antonio to investigate their options...

A lof of you will recall the latter case -- Nikolouzos's family wants to keep him alive, but the Texas Futile Care Law -- signed by then-governor George W. Bush and supported by National Right to Life (which helped write it) -- permits hospitals to overrule families in cases like this. Nikolouzos's family was fighting in court successfully to keep him alive during the Schiavo battles, but now it seems that was a temporary victory.

It's quite possible I'd agree with the judgment of the hospital if I were the relative entrusted with making medical decisions in either of these cases -- but I'd want to make the decision, and I want thse relatives to do so, too. (Unlike Terri Schiavo's parents, these are the relatives who actually have the legal right to make decisions.) And I thought the people who railed against the decisions in the Schiavo case believed all life should be preserved by any means necessary, so where's their outrage?

(Links via Democratic Underground, Rising Hegemon, and Mark A.R. Kleiman.)