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L.A. Times article on liver transplants for illegal aliens: The Ethics of Open Borders
April 13, 2008
Today's L.A. Times has a heart-wrenching article that depicts an illegal alien who came to the U.S. to get a liver transplant. She received two transplants in 1989, shortly after her arrival, and then another in 1998.
Now she's 21 and she needs yet another transplant. The problem is that her state-funded insurance has run out.
But the situation is not hopeless. All she had to do was to notify the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service that she is illegal and presto, she might be eligible for another round of free medical insurance.
But it's not certain that she will qualify, and that presents the moral drama that the article is designed to highlight.
Liver transplants aren't cheap. Each costs $490,000 plus $30,000 per year for medication. And livers for transplant are in short supply, so transplants for illegals prevent American citizens from getting them.
No problem. Giving transplants to illegals is entirely ethical according to D. Michael Shapiro, vice-chairman of the ethics committee for the donation program. "People are people, and when you make an incision in an organ donor, you don't find little American flags planted in their organs."
We wonder if Dr. Shapiro would have a similar sense of ethics for a donor program in Israel that would result in a Palestinian getting an organ from an Israeli while Israelis die because they can't get organs. People are people.
Shapiro's ethics is the ultimate in open borders ideology. The logic would seem to imply that recipient lists should be expanded to include all of humanity. After all, with this logic, there is no ethical reason why the program should be restricted to those who managed to get to the U.S. And surely there must be some law that would make U.S. tax payers foot the bill. After all, people are people.
Finally, the article presents the issue as a moral imperative for Americans. The print version of the article (but not the internet version) is headlined "Spared as children — then cut loose." The article appears under the heading "Life in the Shadows." The idea seems to be that if illegals were made legal this moral catastrophe in which illegal immigrants might be on their own for medial insurance at age 21 could be ended at last. [article]