Day 482: Privatization - When Money Outweighs Everything Else

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2523016/Pregnant-woman-miscarried-privately-run-prison-forced-clear-blood-cell-floor.html

A woman who miscarried in a prison cell was forced to clean up the blood herself, a court heard - while her foetus lay dead on the floor.

Nadine Wright, who was on remand for stealing £14 of food from a village shop, claimed she was only treated by HMP Peterborough three days later despite a nurse watching the miscarriage.

The 37-year-old heroin addict, who had mental health issues and was grieving after the death of her mother, was said to be deeply traumatised by the incident.

Wright's barrister Philip Gibbs told Leicester Crown Court: 'There was blood everywhere and she was made to clean it up.

'The baby was not removed from the cell. It was quite appalling. It was very traumatic.'

The claims emerged as Wright was jailed for 10 months after she admitted breaching two court orders, by not attending probation appointments and shoplifting once.

She stole £13.94 of food from a Co-Op in the village of Newbold Verdon, Leicestershire, where she lived.

But she said she did it out of desperation because probation officers had not helped her get benefit payments, despite her being under their supervision for 11 months. - DailyMail

This is only one case of many in which the cost of improving even one life is determined to be too high. What does money matter when a life is at stake? What does money matter when it is someone we love who's "value" is being determined. We cannot value the lives of our loved ones higher than the lives of other peoples' loved ones - we cannot want the best for only those we love and not care about other lives as much. Everyone loves someone or something - everyone cares about something. Everyone has one part of their lives that they would give everything up in order to protect.

The way we determine the value of a life is both subjective and objective: where our emotions are involved we are subjective - like with family - but where we don't have an emotional stake then we are far more willing to value a life objectively - like with someone on the other side of the world who we have never and will never meet. Obviously no one life will be given the same value by every single person - it is simply not possible.

The way our system works is essentially based on a life's worth being determined by economic/monetary assets. Those people who have access to money will be able to access a better quality of life. Those people who have access to a lot of money are able to pay for whatever health-related costs they may face. This doesn't mean that those people who do not have money wouldn't pay if they could - that they wouldn't give everything they had if it meant that they could pay for their sick child to receive good medical care - but because they do not have access to the particular assets required to pay for a certain lifestyle, they are deemed (by the system at least, so on a subconscious and unconscious level) to not deserve that decent quality of life.

There are some things in life that should be freely given, freely accessible, to all living beings: food, shelter, healthcare, education, clean water, the opportunity to earn a good living. To put a price on these things is to dehumanize us, to diminish the value of a life. It is the act of nullifying the love that a parent feels for their child, because it makes them absolutely helpless and incapable of doing anything to improve the life of their child. This is a crime against life.