Workers World Editorial: Punishing the Victims Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit -------------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the June 3, 1999 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------------- EDITORIAL: PUNISHING THE VICTIM The U.S. capitalist system has a unique method of setting trag edies right: it punishes the victim. And that's exactly what it did this May in New York to "correct" a widely publicized failure of the health-care system. Two years ago a 19-year-old single mother, Tabitha Walrond, gave birth to a son, Tyler. Walrond had taken childbirth classes while she finished high school at night and was following advice from doctors and her family to breast-feed her child. In most cases, this would be the right advice, but either because she had had a breast operation or because her baby had an adrenal-gland defect, he was not thriving. She brought her two-month-old to a clinic for a checkup. The clinic screeners refused to have him examined because he did not yet have his Medicaid card. Soon after that failed attempt to get care, Walrond hailed a taxi to bring her son to the emergency room after she found him frothing at the mouth. But Tyler died in her arms on the way. A reasonable first reaction to this would be to cry over the tragedy of Tyler's death and get angry at the nit-picker in the clinic who refused to let Tyler be seen. A little thought would lead to a second reaction: realizing that the health-care-for-profit system demands that patients prove they can pay--or that a third party will pay--before they can get health care. Screeners who are kind-hearted are switched to other positions, if they don't lose their jobs entirely. The guilty party here is the capitalist health-care system. Did the state react by changing its rules for clinic admissions? No. By more aggressively seeking out young parents and making it easier for them to get proper medical advice? No. Did legislators make sure this tragedy could never be repeated by proposing laws guaranteeing health care to all people, including children of poor people? No. Instead, the City of New York charged Tabitha Walrond with manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide for failing to care properly for Tyler. And on May 18, a jury convicted her of the "lesser" charge, criminally negligent homicide. She faces up to four years in prison at her June 30 sentencing. The New York courts let the criminal capitalist health care system off the hook and punished instead the victim, the individual already suffering because she lost her child. - END - (Copyleft Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: ww@workers.org. For subscription info info send message to: info@workers.org. Web: http://www.workers.org) ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytrc-06.03.99-23:54:57-4572