How does this happen?

Today, several of the blogs I follow featured this article:
Brick Walls

Go and read it. No, really. Go read it. You will have to read it to believe it. It's about a little girl who is cognitively impaired (MR) that needs a kidney transplant to survive.

“So you mean to tell me that as a doctor, you are not recommending the transplant, and when her kidneys fail in six months to a year, you want me to let her die because she is mentally retarded? There is no other medical reason for her not to have this transplant other than she is MENTALLY RETARDED!”

“Yes. This is hard for me, you know.”

How, in this day and age, is someone denied a life-saving transplant SOLELY because they are cognitively impaired (mentally retarded)? HOW?!?!!

I read this, on one of my favorite blogs, and Elizabeth Aquino sums it all up for me.

A life's worth is not determined because someone is or isn't cognitively or developmentally or physically disabled. JT is not less because he has autism. Because that's exactly what these doctors are saying. That a disability makes you LESS THAN. That your life is not worth saving, not worth living because you are disabled. That you don't matter.

I encourage you to sign the Change.org petition that has been set up in response to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and their refusal of life-saving treatment of Amelia.