On May 8, the Texas House of Representatives passed a bill that would amend a notorious state law that gives families and patients just 10 days to live while appealing doctors’ decision to remove life support.
Currently, patients in Texas are vulnerable to the decisions of doctors and hospitals to have life-supporting care removed if it is deemed “medically inappropriate.” Under the current Texas Advance Directives Act (TADA), there is no reporting of this decision, nor any process of appeal. Once this decision has been made, patients have 10 days to find continuing care elsewhere; otherwise, their life-sustaining treatment could be removed against their wishes.
HB 3162, authored by Rep. Stephanie Klick, would implement pro-life changes to parts of TADA to include the “10-Day Rule.” Importantly, Rep. Klick’s bill would also completely block “quality of life” from being used as a criteria to evaluate the need for continuing treatment. “Quality of life” is a false category frequently applied to other people – typically the elderly or disabled or preborn babies with Down syndrome – in order to justify killing them via abortion or euthanasia.
In addition, Rep. Klick’s bill seeks to implement other significant pro-life protections: give families more notice of hospital ethics committee meetings and invite loved ones to sit in; extend the time period from 10 to 25 days for families to seek alternate treatment after the hospital has decided to stop treatment; prevent the process from being used on competent patients; and require hospitals to help loved ones find another point of care for the patient.
In 2019, the story of baby Tinslee Lewis exposed the unreasonable cruelty of the 10-Day Rule, bringing the issue to national attention and sending waves of shock and outrage worldwide. Tinslee was born prematurely and with a condition in which her heart pressed against her lungs, causing blood to flow partially backwards, making it difficult for her to breathe and requiring her to use a ventilator.
Although she had no profound brain damage, her doctors at Cook Children’s Medical Center argued again and again – even before the Supreme Court – that she had no quality of life, that she was in pain from her diagnosis, and that her condition would never improve. For these reasons, they argued she should be removed from her ventilator as it was medically inappropriate to continue to support her breathing. This meant that her parents had only 10 days to seek medical care elsewhere, which the hospital attempted to block, before she would be removed from the ventilator.
Fortunately the family was able to find continuing care for her. In 2022, defying her doctors’ expectations, Tinslee went home in Ft. Worth to be with her family, needing only a portable ventilator.
When TADA was signed into law in 1999, as Texas Right to Life President Dr. John Seago explains in a video, “the act was put in place to help Texas patients communicate their medical wishes to their doctors in the event that they become unable to make decisions on their own,” and pro-lifers were assured the bill contained safeguards. However, “it actually trumped advance directives and gave ultimate life and death decisions to hospitals regardless of the desires of the family or even the patients themselves.”
“The toll taken by the 10-Day Rule cannot be understated since its enactment in 1999. Countless families know firsthand the relief these changes would bring,” added Dr. Seago in a press release.
HB 3162 now moves to the Senate, where it must pass before the Texas Legislature adjourns on May 29.
