2.01.2007

Side effects of blood transfusions

The seizure of three sextuplets born last month at BC Children's and Women's last month may have briefly split up the Jehovah's Witness family they were born to, but the ensuing court challenge may create a bigger split in the right-wing BC Liberal coalition in charge of the BC government who seized the babies. For most people, giving much-needed blood transfusions to premature babies is a medical matter of course, unless one's IV is attached to a plastic bag filled with a religious solution. The Carole Taylors and Colin Hansens of the world will sleep tonight believing that their government did the right thing, but the Rich Colemans and Mary Polaks will be stirring in the wee hours for a few nights to come.

That stirring could also stir the hard political right in British Columbia, who latched on with the BC Liberals under Gordon Campbell in an attempt to cripple their common enemy, the NDP, from any position of influence in the body politic. Fringe elements like BC Unity, Reform BC, and the remnants of Social Credit that weren't assimilated by the Liberals, all trade on the hinterland resentment of the urban, the unfamiliar, and the Godless. A government full of big-city rich folk treading on the religious freedoms of simple people by stealing their babies is too tempting a Goliath for these Davids not to load the slingshot for, and Goliath is already reeling from scandals only beginning to catch up with him. They may not knock the giant down, but they could soften him up for their socialist enemies to strike the final blow.

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