Betsy McCaughey writes about the views of Ezekiel Emanuel on the value of life. Quite shocking was the following written by Emanuel:

"Treating 65 year olds differently because of stereotypes or falsehoods would be ageist; treating them differently because they have already had more life-years is not."

Even more shocking:

"Adolescents have received substantial education and parental care, investments that will be wasted without a complete life. Infants, by contrast, have not yet received these investments...As the legal philosopher Ronald Dworking argues, 'It is terrible when and infant dies, but worse, most people think, when a three-year old dies and worse still when an adolescent does,' this argument is supported by empirical surveys."

The government has no right whatsoever to decide whose lives are most important. It is arbitrarirally discriminatory. It is true that leaving decisions to the market can be harsh and discriminatory as well. But I prefer the discrimination of nature to the arbitrary discrimination of government bureaucracy.