Fort Worth, Texas, Feb 7, 2020 / 11:16 am (CNA).- An appeals court heard arguments Tuesday regarding the medical treatment of a terminally ill child in Fort Worth, and whether a law regarding the dispute resolution process is constitutional.
Tinslee Lewis was born prematurely Feb. 1, 2019, and has since been in the cardiac intensive care unit at Cook Children’s Medical Center.
Physicians at the hospital believe life-sustaining treatment for Lewis is medically inappropriate, a decision affirmed by an ethics committee. Lewis’ mother, Trinity, wants treatment to continue, and has gone to court to prevent the life-sustaining treatment from being withdrawn.
The Texas Advance Directives Act allows physicians and health care facilities to withdraw life-sustaining treatment considered medically inappropriate after 10 days.
The Second Court of Appeals of Texas heard arguments in the case Feb. 4. It is unknown when it will rule in the case, and it has ordered that medical treatment for Lewis be continued until it does so.
Joe Nixon, the attorney for the Lewises, said TADA grants “medical paternity over autonomy,” the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported.
Texas Solicitor General Kyle Hawkins argued that TADA should be halted.
Cook Children’s attorney, Amy Warr, argued that doctors may decline to provide care if it “causes suffering without medical benefit,” citing conscience rights.
The case has divided the pro-life community in Texas.
Dr. Joe Pojman, Texas Alliance for Life’s executive director, said ahead of the hearing that “We believe the dispute resolution process in Texas law is both good public policy and is constitutional.”
He added that “the Texas law is among the best in the nation. It balances patients’ rights to make end of life decisions with the rights of physicians to not indefinitely order painful, medically inappropriate interventions to terminally ill patients that only prolong their deaths with no proportional benefit.”
Texas Alliance for Life, along with the Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops and several other pro-life groups, disability advocates, and medical groups, filed an amici curiae brief Jan. 29 supporting TADA.
The brief said TADA has given physicians and families “a structure for having difficult end-of-life conversations—and for reaching a resolution if the families and treating physician do not ultimately agree.”
“A medical intervention that could further prolong life can also, directly or indirectly, inflict significant suffering without proportionate benefit to the patient. A physician might conclude that making further interventions on a patient near the end of life, in a medical situation with no meaningful prospect for cure or recovery, would inflict only harm on the patient—violating one of the oldest and most deeply held principles of medical ethics. Medical providers in that position face not only an ethical dilemma but also feel moral distress over being the instrument used to inflict that non-beneficial suffering on a patient.”
The amici curiae brief called TADA a “carefully balanced statute” that should be upheld by the appellate court.
It added that striking down TADA would constitute judicial activism, stating that “disagreements about a policy decision made by the Legislature, however deeply felt, do not state a constitutional claim.”
In explaining its interest in the case, the Texas bishops’ conference said it rejects “medical decision-making based on flawed “quality-of-life” arguments which are often used to falsely justify euthanasia. “The bishops have consistently supported the truth that decisions regarding treatment should be made through this lens of the inherent sanctity of all human life while recognizing that underlying medical conditions can have an impact on the effectiveness or appropriateness of certain medical interventions.”
“They believe that treatment decisions should be based on whether or not the expected benefit of the treatment outweighs the burden to the patient. Some may claim that this is a quality of life decision, or one that allows discrimination, but they are wrong—it is an assessment of the quality or effectiveness of the treatment or intervention, not the quality of life for the patient.”
The Texas bishops’ conference said it supports “continued legislative improvements” to TADA, “particularly those that safeguard against any discrimination in providing necessary and effective life-sustaining treatment,” but it “generally supports” the law’s framework “as a balanced dispute resolution process that respects both patient dignity and healthcare provider conscience.”
Trinity Lewis is being supported by Texas Right to Life, which has said that “the 10-Day Rule has robbed countless patients of their Right to Life and right to due process.”
Texas Home School Coalition is also supporting Trinity, in light of its concern for parental rights. In an amicus curiae brief of Jan. 27, it argued that “in permitting an ethics committee” to substitute their decisions regarding Tinslee’s best interest for Trinity’s decisions,” TADA “violates the substantive due process rights of [Trinity] and potentially all parents seeking medical care for their children.”
The home school group charged that “the quality of one’s life is so personal that the decision must belong to the one living it or the person designated to make that decision. The doctors believe that pain and suffering without a medical probability of recovery is immoral. Mother believes that God still has a plan. The state cannot determine whose beliefs are superior.”
Its amicus brief asked, “How can the state possibly have a compelling state interest in ending the life of a child for no other reason than the doctor no longer wishes to provide care for her?” It also characterized TADA as having “no limitations on the reason for the doctor refusing to honor the patient’s directive,” saying it “is so vague that a doctor could decide not to continue providing services for any reasons, such as the color of the patient’s skin or the religious beliefs of the patient.”
The state of Texas also filed an amicus curiae brief in the case Jan. 17 asking that the court declare TADA unconstitutional, arguing the statute “allows the government to deny an individual his or her life, and it does so without constitutionally sufficient process.”
It characterized the statute’s dispute resolution process as denying patients and their proxies “sufficient notice and opportunity to be heard,” as well as “a neutral arbiter to decide their fate.”
TADA includes a ’10-day rule’ that says when the attending physician has decided and an ethics or medical committee has affirmed that a life-sustaining treatment is medically inappropriate, but the patient or their responsible continues to request the treatment, the attending physician and the health care facility are not obligated to provide life-sustaining treatment after the 10th day after the decision is provided to the patient or their responsible.
The rule says the physician is to make a reasonable effort to transfer the patient in such a case to a physician who is willing to comply with the directive.
TADA was adopted in 1999, without a dissenting vote. It passed the Senate unanimously, and the House on a voice vote. It was amended in 2003 and 2015. The 2015 amendment, which removed artificial nutrition and hydration from its scope, was adopted unanimously in the House, and by a voice vote in the Senate.
Joe Nixon, who is representing the Lewises, was a member of the Texas House of Representatives from 1995 to 2007.
Tinslee Lewis has Ebstein’s anomaly, a congenital heart defect; chronic lung disease; and severe chronic high blood pressure, according to the AP. She has been on a ventilator since July, and also requires cardiac support, painkillers, sedation, and medical paralysis. She currently has severe sepsis.
The hospital said that Lewis’ healthcare providers agreed by August that continued care was futile, and had begun discussing with her family the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment by September. The hospital’s ethics committee decided unanimously Oct. 30 that further treatment was medically inappropriate.
The hospital intended to stop Lewis’ treatment Nov. 10, after disagreeing with the decision of her mother regarding her treatment.
At a December hearing, judge Sandee Bryan Marion said she would allow more time for an alternative facility to be found for Lewis’ care. Cook Children’s said at that time that it would take no action to withdraw life sustaining treatment from Lewis for seven days from the court’s decision, to allow plaintiffs to file a notice of appeal and a motion for emergency relief with an appeals court.
Dr. Jay Duncan, a physician attending Lewis, said at the hearing that until July, there had been hope she might be able to go home, but it became clear that surgical and clinical options had been exhausted and her treatment was no longer beneficial.
A judge acting for the Tarrant County district court ruled Jan. 2 that indefinite medical interventions for Lewis could be stopped, in accord with the Texas Advance Directives Act, but Lewis was granted emergency relief the following day by the appeals court.
Bishop Michael Olson of Fort Worth has offered to assist Lewis’ family “in seeking compassionate and appropriate care for her in a Catholic health care facility.”
Cook Children’s has said it has contacted “more than 20, well-respected healthcare facilities and specialists over the course of several months, but even the highest level of medical expertise cannot correct conditions as severe as Tinslee’s.”
Disagreement over end-of-life reform is among the three criteria on the basis of which the Texas bishops’ conference urged parishes in March 2018 not to participate in the activities of Texas Right to Life.
The bishops said they “have been compelled to publicly correct Texas Right to Life’s misstatements on end-of-life care and advance directives, in which Texas Right to Life implied that the legislation the bishops were supporting allowed euthanasia and death panels rather than the reality that the legislation reflected the long-standing Church teaching requiring a balance of patient autonomy and the physician conscience protection.”
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Seitz’s position (and that of the majority of US bishops, since they elected him as their representative on this issue) is nothing less than an endorsement of open-borders mayhem. CNA would doubtlessly consider it disrespectful to ask His Excellency if he thinks there ought to be any restrictions, quantitative or qualitative, on immigration to America. He would refuse to answer anyway, but we know.
His list of harmful measures is bogus. Unaccompanied children have been exposed to the greatest dangers imaginable as they are smuggled north by drug dealers and pimps. Almost all the asylum claims are phony. People who enter a country illegally should expect to be detained and deported. They certainly have no right to employment in a country where their presence is illegal. Of course, Seitz has no concerns about the welfare of the American people whose wages are being undercut, neighborhoods are being made unsafe and whose country is being turned into a vast, incoherent Third World dump. All of this will only make life more miserable for all parties, with the possible exceptions of the oligarchs and their well-connected flunkies like the ones shown in photo.
When have any of these bishops condemned Pope Francis for praising the tyrannical governments that exacerbated the poverty that increased the desperation of the migrants?
“The provisions discussed,” wrote Seitz, “underscore the extreme nature of this bill, its incompatibility with Catholic social teaching, and its inconsistency with our nation’s broadly bipartisan commitment to humanitarian protection.”
These official statements by “Bishop” Seitz and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and its Committee on Migration are flagrant and outright lies that in no way, shape, form, or fashion represent Catholic social teaching or the values of the United States. What they do represent is approval, support, and encouragement of unrestricted invasion by illegal alien invaders, almost all of whom are single men in their 20’s and 30’s, from almost 190 countries around the globe, including Islamist and Communist terrorists; virtually total control of this country’s by barbarically criminal drug cartels profiting in the billions of dollars annually from human trafficking, fentanyl and methamphetamine drug trafficking; the sex slavery of children and women and the massive rape and sexual exploitation of hundreds of thousands of children and women seeking to avail themselves of illegal entry to this country; the collapse of social welfare, hospital, and health care facilities throughout the entire Southern border as well as in virtually every major city in this country; the corruption of elections throughout this country by millions of fraudulent votes; and spread of documented deadly infections such as tuberculosis, syphilis, gonorrhoea, leprosy, polio, cholera, diphtheria, smallpox, or severe acute respiratory syndromes.
Is it any wonder that Catholics who read such cynical propaganda from “Bishop” Seitz and his fellow hirelings at the USCCB are scandalized and outraged when they learn that billions of dollars of their taxpayer money is being paid every year to carry on this sordid charade? For example, Catholic Charities had revenues last year of $4.7 billion, $2.9 billion of which came from the U.S. government for illegal immigration support.
Every year over the past 10 years the cry has grown louder and louder that there is an ape Church which has eclipsed the one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church in the Vatican with its world-wide sexual perversions, stunning financial crimes and corruption, and almost daily denials and deformations of dogma and doctrine. It is actions like these of “Bishop” Seitz and the USCCB that only extend and confirm these realities.
I think that the doors to our country need to be open to those wishing to immigrate and become hard-working American citizens. Due to legalized abortion (69-72 million killed since 1972) and Americans choosing to remain childless or limiting their families to 1 or 2 children (or discovering that they are unable to conceive for various reasons, including waiting until late in life to try to conceive), our population is decreasing. The Baby Boomer generation (my generation) is still with us and many of us who were born in the late 1950s and early 1960s are just now coming to the age of retirement–and many of us do NOT wish to continue working (or cannot work due to various physical/mental conditions). WE NEED PEOPLE TO DO THE WORK THAT KEEPS OUR NATION GOING! The shortage of medical professionals, especially in the non-nursing fields (lab, X-Ray, respiratory, MRI, Physical Therapy assistants, etc.) is alarming–if the nation knew how short-staffed many medical labs are, there would be panic. And the various industries are short-staffed–in Missouri, a factory is supposed to be opening that will offer employment to 10,000 workers–they are counting on immigrants (primarily Mexican) and are preparing housing and other services to assist them as they move to Missouri. The Catholic Church is also preparing, as one of the parishes is scheduled to become a Hispanic parish. The need for workers in all fields is huge! WE NEED MORE PEOPLE IN THIS COUNTRY! Yes, stop the drug lords, the mobs, the sex-traffickers, and street gang recruiters from getting into this country, but everyone else who wants to come to the U.S. and become Americans should be welcomed and given the assistance to assimilate into our great country and join us as we work and play!! I find it hypocritical that the Republicans want to save the unborn but reject the immigrants. They should welcome ALL human beings. (I am a registered Republican.) We have plenty of room in the U.S.!
Well, in principle yes Mrs. Sharon. We need immigration but we need to do it through reasonable legal channels as our neighbors do. Canada being an example.
Mexico has pretty strict requirements re. immigration & rules for foreign nationals residing in their country.
Mexico is no longer a Third World nation & their birth rates have plummeted also. Mexico will be looking for young people to fill their future workforce too & they should be looking to accommodate more Latin American migrants rather than sending them North to be preyed upon further by cartels.
A truly disheartening stand by these bishops [I’m confidant not all agree]. Flagrantly socialistic in tone. With all the horrors committed at the border, child exploitation, trafficking, fentanyl they stand smilingly in unison, hold hands with the greatest purveyor of in utero infanticide, perversion, sexual mutilation of children the world has known.
Of course, the bill has no chance of clearing the Senate much less being signed into law, so the bishops have no cause for concern.
Title 42, a pandemic-era public health policy that placed restrictions on immigrants entering the US, comes to an end 11 May. The public health legislation was issued by the TRUMP administration and denied refugee status to migrants on the US’ southern border. The policy’s end comes as the Biden administration is ending the Covid public health emergency nationally.
I ask, since the illegal immigrants are coming mostly from Central American countries whose COVID testing is suspect, at best, should President Biden lift Title 42?
CNN: “What will happen if Title 42 is lifted? Officials predict that lifting Title 42 is likely to spur a significant increase in the number of migrants trying to cross into the US. One reason for the expected spike: Many migrants who were sent back to Mexico under the policy are desperate and losing patience.” Can we honor the saying on Lady Liberty?
““Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
You know Morgan, Mexico is no longer a Third World country and they can lend a hand in offering other Latin American migrants a place to live and work. Especially folks escaping the situation in Venezuela.
Immigration through proper channels…not enmassed to repeatedly rush the borders of the southern states. Biden didn’t end the Covid emergency; if he could he would permanently extend such a power grab.
Ellis Island and the immigrants from Europe were radically different from those currently swarming US borders. Today’s illegals, from Federal government data, will rely on services and aid that did not exist one-hundred years ago. There are no language requirements and the idea of assimilation exists where?