News Americas, FORT LAUDERDALE, FL, Fri. May 31, 2019: In an effort to prove just how “Christian” they are, Bible touting right wingers who adopt and quote scripture when it is convenient to their agenda, are now on a mad push to prove just how far they are willing to go to protect a “life.”
The new anti-abortion laws in 8 states, including Alabama, Georgia and Missouri, threatens federal laws already on the books on abortion and a woman’s right to choose, but who cares?
Suddenly, these upstanding Christian lawmakers, are concerned about the right of a fetus from the time of conception.
Forget the living and breathing children who are dying in US detention centers and the thousands being kept apart from their parents or dying from gun violence daily.
Who cares about those children? Only the fetus counts at this point, while it’s still in the womb, not once it enters the world!
I will skip the thousands of children who have been victims of gun violence for this column and get straight to the immigrant children whose lives are not even a blip on the radar of these Bible-touting Republicans.
On Monday, May 20th, it was reported that a fifth child had died in U.S. Border Patrol custody since December 2018. According to reports, the 16-year-old teen from Guatemala died Monday at a Border Patrol station in South Texas’ Rio Grande Valley.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection said the teen was found unresponsive Monday morning during a welfare check at the agency’s Weslaco, Texas, station and his cause of death is unknown. His death came after he was detained for a week already. Federal law requires the Department of Homeland Security to send minors unaccompanied by a parent or legal guardian to HHS within 72 hours of determining that the child is unaccompanied.
This teen’s death comes on the heels of the death of a 2-year-old child who died on May 14th in custody after he and his mother were detained by the Border Patrol.
The agency says it took the child to the hospital the same day the mother reported he was sick, and he was hospitalized for several weeks.
Three other children have also died in custody in the past five months. On April 30, a 16-year-old Guatemalan boy died after officials at an HHS detention facility noticed that he was sick. He was hospitalized in intensive care for several days before his death.
And two children ages 7 and 8, died in December.
This news comes as Lee Gelernt, the lead ACLU lawyer in the organizations separations case against the administration, said in a statement that “the government has indicated that it has already found preliminary indications of 1,700 more separated families, on top of the more than 3,000 separated families already reported.”
That means there are still some 4,700 children still separated from their families suffering untold trauma – emotionally, mentally and perhaps physically as they are vulnerable to sexual abuse and even bullying.
But don’t bother right-wingers with this issue. Afterall, these are “illegals” trying to enter the country without merit. Who cares about their lives?
