Charlotte Shields-Rossi | a&e editor

Who wins when a baby dies?

Well, it depends on how the baby died of course.

Last month, more than 200 miles away in Lancaster County, an Amish family’s infant died. This sparked a heated debate about the cause of death. Did the baby die from measles? Or with measles?

It’s a sad affair either way. The fact is a baby died, measles or not. But the distinction was seemingly of great importance for political elites.

If you ask Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, the baby died from measles, evidence of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s misguided and dangerous vaccine opinions.

If you ask Kennedy, the baby did not die from measles but died with measles, and Democrats were lying and non-cooperative with the current administration.

It was later confirmed that the baby died from measles, at which point Kennedy conceded.

In the days following, politicians took to X and Truth Social, held news conferences and talked with the media. They were quick to say whether it was with or from, yet slow to offer condolences to a family that suffered an unimaginable loss.

In a world where eggs are political, death often is as well. The vaccine debate is a partisan issue that does have real world consequences — the baby’s death at its core was political.

Misinformation surrounding vaccines is something that needs to be addressed. Flaws in the system that are brought to life after a tragedy such as this should be recognized and rectified.

But we should be able to do it without losing our sense of humanity. I know because we have done it before.

In 1994, 7-year-old Megan Kanka was murdered by Jesse Timmendequas, a registered sex-offender. Legislators banded together to create Megan’s Law, which would require law enforcement to disclose details relating to the information of registered sex offenders.

The law passed unanimously in both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

If Kanka was murdered today I’m certain it would play out as such: Republicans would blame the Democrats for not being tough on crime. The Democrats would rebut by reminding them that President Donald Trump was found liable for the rape of E. Jean Caroll. They would talk about the transgender bathroom debate, the Epstein files, drag queens reading to children and quickly they would forget about Kanka altogether. She would become another faceless, nameless, political pawn. They certainly would pass no legislation in response.

Families still go through the five stages of grief that Kanka’s family did. They deny, get angry, bargain, fall into a depression and eventually find acceptance. And years ago it seemed as though legislators felt some grief alongside them, or at least some sympathy.

But sympathy and grief cannot coexist with exploitation.

In May 2024, 11-year-old Aiden Clark was killed in Springfield, Ohio in a bus crash caused by a Haitian immigrant, Hermanio Joseph. With the presidential elections approaching, Trump and Vice President JD Vance, who were focusing on immigration concerns at the time, found an opportunity in Clark’s death.

While grappling with the fact that he would never see his son again, Nathan Clark, the father of the child, took time to speak at a Springfield City Commission hearing. With tears in his eyes, he begged Trump and Vance to stop using his son as a political tool.

“I wish that my son, Aiden Clark, was killed by a 60-year-old white man. I bet you never thought anyone would ever say something so blunt. But if that guy killed my 11-year-old son, the incessant group of hate-spewing people would leave us alone,” Clark said.

While Clark was burying his son, he wasn’t thinking about the ethnicity or immigration status of the man that killed him. For the grieving father, the tragedy of his 11-year-old son dying was tragedy enough.

And like the death of the baby in Lancaster, politicians were too busy focusing on how they could twist the story for political gain that they lost sight of extending sympathy to a grieving family.

I remember being in middle school during the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida. In the wake of a mass shooting that killed 17 people, I remember feeling angry that politicians did nothing but express their thoughts and prayers. But six years later, even thoughts and prayers are few and far between.

Politicians have become too prideful to admit that their party messed up; too opportunistic to see the real catastrophe, too apathetic to not be able to express their condolences or listen to a bereaved family, and finally, too partisan or maybe just too lazy to do anything about it.

Whether they die from climate change-induced natural disasters, are murdered by an immigrant, pass away from measles, or with measles, when a baby dies, nobody should win.

Charlotte Shields-Rossi can be reached at shieldsrossic@duq.edu