Disaster Aid Unconstitutional

On May 16, 1998, fifteen year old Christopher Sercye was playing basketball with some friends in a Chicago park, when some gang members approached them and opened fire. Terrified, Sercye's friends helped him to a nearby hospital, where he collapsed about 30 feet from the emergency room entrance.

But for nearly half a hour he lay bleeding to death while his friends, onlookers, and police pleaded with hospital workers to help Sercye. They refused.

Their rationale? It was against hospital policy.

As CNN reported at the time, "Sercye was still alive when, 25 minutes after the shooting, a police officer finally commandeered a wheelchair and took him inside. It was too late. A bullet had perforated his aorta, and Sercye died about an hour after being brought inside."

Ironically the hospital's policy, which was intended to protect them from liability, doomed Ravenswood. The fiscally troubled hospital never recovered from the incident and eventually closed down.


"This gruesome incident says a great deal about the coarsening of human relations and the general devaluation of human life that have become ever more pervasive features of American society," wote the World Socialist web site .

In 2004, both the Ayn Rand Institute and Covenant News (a prolife site offering "Today's news for today's church") would rather leave tsumani victims bleeding outside their doors than approve of the US offering disaster relief. Their rationale:
It's unconstitutional.

Here's what they said, first from the Covenant News, which posted this http://www.covenantnews.com/peroutka050103.htm"> Covenant News
"> press release from Michaea Peroutka of the Constitution Party .


The real issue here is whether such so-called Federally-funded disaster “relief” is Constitutional. And the answer is very clear: No, it is not. There isn’t the slightest Constitutional authority for Federal tax dollars to be spent for disaster “relief.” Thus, any such expenditure of Federal tax dollars for disaster “relief” --- foreign or domestic --- is illegal, unlawful. . . .

President Bush has said what he said and is doing what he’s doing. Mr. Bush, however, is wrong and Rep. Crockett was right. To spend Federal tax dollars on disaster “relief” is the grossest corruption because it is blatantly un-Constitutional. It has not the semblance of any Constitutional authority. We must pray that God raises up more Davy Crocketts to serve in our Congress and all other branches of all our civil governments.



Here's almost the same thing from Peter Schwartz of the Ayn Rand Institute:


The United States government, however, should not give any money to help the tsunami victims. Why? Because the money is not the government's to give.

...This is why Americans--the wealthiest people on earth--are expected to sacrifice (voluntarily or by force) the wealth they have earned to provide for the needs of those who did not earn it. It is Americans' acceptance of altruism that renders them morally impotent to protest against the confiscation and distribution of their wealth. It is past time to question--and to reject--such a vicious morality that demands that we sacrifice our values instead of holding on to them.



There is nothing moral or prolife about this kind of nit-picking.

I wouldn't want to be the one trying to explain this sort of behavior to Jesus on judgement day, no thank you.