Upon reading Marcus Afzali’s column “Real issues ignored by Schiavo-loving Right” on March 29, I was rather taken aback and slightly offended at the shortsighted and rather ignorant argument the writer proposed. Afzali basically states that practicing Christians do not show the slightest bit of care toward the homeless and jobless, all the while mourning and praying over the starvation of Terri Schiavo, who died March 31. This, in my opinion, ignores huge facts.

After reading the column, I decided to go online and look up “Christian charities” on Google just to see if Christians are as heartless as Afzali said we were. Google returned over 159,000 websites containing the words “Christian” and “charities.”

While of course I am not stating that there are this many Christian charities, I find it inconceivable that one could ignore the fact that many charities have historically been set up by Christians and other religious organizations. To what does he think the “cross” in The Red Cross refer? What about the Red Crescent? Why does he think so many hospitals have the word “Saint” in their names? Hospitals, in and of themselves, were an invention of early Christians, as were orphanages.

Afzali goes on to state that Christians who mourn the degradation of Schiavo’s life ignore those in need of medical insurance. I Googled “Christian health insurance” and was returned over three million pages containing those words, namely the website of Medi-Share.

Schiavo’s case is not one single incident, as many on the Left would like to think. There are countless Americans who live on life support, “draining” federal money set aside for medical needs. Are these people worthless? According to Lefties, who claim to value human life, they are. Schiavo was a human being who, while alive, was still capable of feeling, and even though she was not productive and “cost more than she paid out,” so to speak, does that warrant her starvation? Absolutely not.

This is the United States, where life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is the driving force behind our set of national values. Who are we to deprive Schiavo of these basic rights simply because she is useless? Her husband, who has taken a mistress and had children with her, all the while refusing to divorce Schiavo (to collect life insurance on her death, probably), deprived Terri of much needed physiotherapy in the early years of her sickness, according to the nurse who was fired after trying to give Terri muscle exercises to prevent atrophy. That heartlessness is what we are fighting.

There is a much bigger picture here than what liberals want us to believe. Because Schiavo starved to death, a precedent has been set for future incidents where the value of human life is in question. People will feel free to terminate someone who is unwell, or elderly, or someone who has been seriously injured.

Presently in the United States, people who are injured are nursed back to health. Babies who are born disabled are given opportunities to succeed as adults. We are not a modern Sparta, where deformed babies were killed after birth. But that is what we are in danger of becoming if the Lefties, who claim to value human life, get their way. That is what we Christians are trying to prevent.

Ian Alan Elliott,

Senior linguistics major