The United States prides itself on being a nation of laws. I would humbly argue we're a nation of way too many laws, but that's a topic of discussion for another day. Here, I want to muse on laws which inherently value the life of one individual over that of another and the moral and ethical dilemmas created. I do not have the answers, only the questions.
Little Sarah Murnaghan suffers from end stage cystic fibrosis. She is aged ten and ineligible, under the law, to be placed on an adult donor list to receive a lung transplant. The law requires recipients on the adult donor list to be a minimum of age twelve. On one hand, we argue that adults and children rightfully belong on separate waiting lists for organ transplants, that children should receive organs from child donors. On the other hand, we argue that the life of a ten-year-old is every bit as valuable as the life of a twelve-year-old or a sixty-year-old and that there is no medical reason a child under the age of twelve cannot receive an adult lung. The dilemma here is not whether to save one life but rather whether it's proper to potentially sacrifice one adult life for the sake of a child.
I learned today that a person who commits a murder in the State of Arizona is eligible for the death penalty if the victim is under the age of fifteen or over the age of seventy. Killing, say, a thirty-five-year-old mother of four just wouldn't qualify. This suggests to us a societal conviction that the lives of youths and elders are worth more than that mother's life.
Individual states have laws governing the age at which a youthful offender may be tried as an adult. Persons under that specified age would be tried as a child and not be subject to the death penalty, no matter how many people he or she killed or how horrendous the killing was or the age of the person they killed.
Those are just a sampling of how the laws of this land attempt to place a relative value on human life. We no longer believe that all men are created equal. Or do we?
Just askin'...
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