If your daughter needed an operation to save her life, but you didn’t have the money, would you just let her die?
Or would you do anything in your power to come up with the money. Would you work overtime, borrow on anything you could, get another job?
Of course you would.
In the movie John Q., Denzel Washington holds the operating room staff of a hospital hostage to try to get heart surgery for his dying son. They won’t perform the surgery because Washington doesn’t have insurance.
What if that wasn’t enough? What if all the resources available to you weren’t enough to pay for an operation to save her life? Would you sell a lung or a kidney to save her?
If none of that worked, would you just let your daughter die? Or would you do whatever it took, even if that was illegal? Would you lie, steal or cheat to keep her alive? Or would you let her die.
I know what I would do. I would do whatever it took. I would steal or lie if I had to. If the medicine needed to save her were available only in Mexico, I’d go there to get it. If the surgery was available only in a foreign country, I’d find a way to get her to that country even if it was off limits to people living here.
Washington even threatens to kill himself when he thinks he may be the only compatible donor of a heart for her.
I would do whatever it took.
In fact, if my daughter weren’t dying, but just starving, I would do whatever it took to find food for her.
And if I thought that living in this country was going to keep her from being able to live a healthy, normal life, I would do whatever it took to resolve that problem.
Would you?
Would you smuggle drugs to save your daughter’s life if it was the only way?
Would you cut down a fence and break in somewhere to get the money to save her?
Would you run a marathon in the dead of summer to raise the money to save her?
I would do whatever it took, even if that meant entering this country illegally from Mexico and picking vegetables, or washing dishes or cleaning hotel rooms.
Would you expect a parent to do anything less?
What would you do?
— Elliott Freireich
Publisher
