"For the Love of Joshua"

This is not your father's liberalism.

Does anyone remember the television show Quincy, M.E. that ran from 1976 - 1983? Jack Klugman played Quincy, an forensic autopsy guy given to fits of moralistic dudgeon over this or that injustice. The show wasn't on childhood "approved T.V. list" (which was pretty much limited to Little House on the Prairie) but I caught a few times at other people's houses.

Two episodes stand out in my recollection. "For the Benefit of My Patients" concerned a private hospital that wouldn't provide ER care to anyone without the means to pay, something they evidently could still do back in 1979. Of course, now this is against the law, which has bankrupted many ERs in the southwest for the reasons you might expect. But then, racking up unintended consequences was what seventies-era liberalism did, which is why they've been kept out of elected power for twenty-eight years.

Oh, and that second episode I remember? "For the Love of Joshua" was about a hospital that denied treatment to babies born with Down's Syndrome. (By "treatment" I mean food and water. The children were simply wheeled into a room and left to die.) I forget the details, but Quincy forces an investigation into the practice, and the episode featured an actor who actually had Down's Syndrome that is brought to a hearing to plead the case of Down's babies.

The times, they be a-changin'.

Now, confronted with a mother actually doing the right thing by her disabled child, the Left has erupted into paroxysms of rage, essentially calling for little Trig's death. That whole "wheeled into a room and left" thing is now considered the responsible course.

Where is Quincy when we need him?