Fort Worth, Texas, Jan 3, 2020 / 05:12 pm (CNA).- After a Texas judge on Thursday allowed a hospital to stop medical treatment for Tinslee Lewis, a terminally ill child in Fort Worth, the local bishop offered to help her family seek care in a Catholic healthcare facility.
Lewis was born prematurely Feb. 1, 2019, and has since been in the cardiac intensive care unit at Cook Children’s Medical Center. She 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, Trinity, regarding her treatment. The girl’s doctors believe her condition to be fatal and that she is in pain.
The Texas Advanced Directives Act 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, and was amended in 2003 and 2015. The 2015 amendment was adopted unanimously in the House vote, and by a voice vote in the Senate.
A Tarrant County judge had issued a temporary restraining order to prevent the removal of life-sustaining treatment Nov. 10, but the hospital “filed a motion questioning his impartiality and saying he had bypassed case-assignment rules to designate himself as the presiding judge,” the AP reported.
The case was then transferred to Sandee Bryan Marion, Chief Justice of the Texas Fourth Court of Appeals, who held a hearing in December.
At that time, Marion said she would allow more time for an alternative facility to be found for Lewis’ care. And 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.
Marion ruled Jan. 2 to deny the application for a temporary injunction to require indefinite medical interventions for Lewis.
The decision “restores the ability of the Cook Children’s medical staff to make the most compassionate and medically appropriate decisions for Tinslee,” Cook Children’s said.
“Our medical judgment is that Tinslee should be allowed to pass naturally and peacefully rather than artificially kept alive by painful treatments. Even with the most extraordinary measures the medical team is taking, Tinslee continues to suffer,” the hospital said.
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.”
He said Jan. 2 that “healthcare decisions involving the vulnerable and severely ill are best made in the patient’s interests by family and healthcare providers and not by judges, by politicians, or lobbyists.”
A spokesman for the Diocese of Fort Worth told CNA Jan. 3 that the bishop’s offer of assistance had been passed to the Lewis family by Cook Children’s, and that “a representative of the family has contacted the Diocese.”
For its part, the hospital said it “has been devoted to this precious baby her entire life, providing compassionate, round-the-clock, intensive care and attention since she arrived at our hospital 11months ago. Her body is tired. She is suffering. It’s time to end this cycle because, tragically, none of these efforts will ever make her better.”
The hospital also noted that it had 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.”
Trinity Lewis stated, “I am heartbroken over today’s decision because the judge basically said Tinslee’s life is NOT worth living. I feel frustrated because anyone in that courtroom would want more time just like I do if Tinslee were their baby. I hope that we can keep fighting through an appeal to protect Tinslee. She deserves the right to live.”
Trinity Lewis had also asked that the ’10-day rule’ be found unconstitutional by the court.
She is being supported by Texas Right to Life, which said that “the ruling not only disregarded the Constitution, but also sentenced an innocent 11-month-old baby to death like a criminal. The 10-Day Rule has robbed countless patients of their Right to Life and right to due process. We pray the appellate court will identify how the law violates Baby Tinslee’s due process rights, revoke her death sentence, and strike down the deadly 10-Day Rule.”
Not all pro-life groups agree with Texas Right to Life’s assessment.
Texas Alliance for Life, another pro-life organization, noted that the case centers on the dispute resolution process in TADA.
“We don’t see how [Marion] could have ruled any other way. As we have stated previously, Texas Alliance for Life supports TADA. It is good public policy, it is constitutional, and it provides a balance between the patient’s autonomy and the physician’s conscience protection rights to do no harm.”
Texas Alliance for Life, along with the Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops and several other pro-life groups, disability advocates, and medical groups, submitted an amicus curiae brief in the case Dec. 11 stating that TADA “helps achieve their essential objectives” and arguing for its constitutionality.
The brief noted that the Texas bishops’ conference “generally supports the framework” of the act “as a balanced dispute resolution process that respects patient dignity and healthcare provider conscience,” while also supporting “continued legislative improvements to the act.”
The brief concludes by saying that “through the Texas Advanced Directives Act, the Legislature has provided families and physicians with a framework for resolving difficult end-of-life decisions. This design includes a safe harbor encouraging physicians and medical institutions to provide multiple layers of review, culminating in a period of time for families to secure a transfer to another medical facility, during which life-sustaining intervention will continue to be provided. The amici believe that the framework created by TADA is essential and constitutional.”
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.”
In its Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services, the US bishops’ conference notes regarding the seriously ill and dying that “we have a duty to preserve our life and to use it for the glory of God, but the duty to preserve life is not absolute, for we may reject life-prolonging procedures that are insufficiently beneficial or excessively burdensome.”
The directives state that “a person has a moral obligation to use ordinary or proportionate means of preserving his or her life. Proportionate means are those that in the judgment of the patient offer a reasonable hope of benefit and do not entail an excessive burden or impose excessive expense on the family or the community,” and that “a person may forgo extraordinary or disproportionate means of preserving life.”
“Disproportionate means are those that in the patient’s judgment do not offer a reasonable hope of benefit or entail an excessive burden, or impose excessive expense on the family or the community.”
Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton released a joint statement Jan. 2, after the temporary injunction was denied, saying that “the state will continue to support Ms. Lewis’s exhaustion of all legal options to ensure that Tinslee is given every chance at life.”
“The Attorney General’s office is involved in the ongoing litigation, fighting to see that due process and the right to life are fully respected by Texas law. The Attorney General’s office will be supporting an appeal of this case to the Second Court of Appeals. The State of Texas is fully prepared to continue its support of Ms. Lewis in the Supreme Court if necessary. We are working diligently to do all we can to ensure that Tinslee and her family are provided the care and support that they seek.”
[…]
Praying for the victims and their families, that the hostages will be released unharmed, that those who are responsible for this heinous crime will be held accountable, and that there will be a lasting Peace in Nigeria.🙏
But isn’t Islam a religion of peace?
Diogenes- and the Crusades?
The Crusades were 700 years ago. Hopefully some minds have been opened in that time frame??? There is no excuse for this sort of UNPROVOKED behavior in the modern era. Let people worship as they will. But tolerance is not a quality that Islamists value. The era when Islam conquered an held a large chunk of Europe have been too soon forgotten.
Give it a rest “Br.Jaques”.
That was my first thought too, Br. Jacques. Not to mention the St. Bartholomew Day massacre, countless pogroms right into the 20th century, Northern Ireland, etc., etc.
We can look at most religions & find examples of violence committed. It’s more about the darkness in our hearts than the doctrines of our faith.
First thoughts often are not the best ones. Familiarize yourself better with the meaning of Jihad and the history of Islam. Armed belligerence against the infidels characterizes Islam from the Mohammed’s time until the present. Unlike many other religions, and specifically Christianity, Islam provides the justification for the violence that its adherents have engaged in.
My first thought wasn’t about Islam but about what all human beings share in their hearts. Christians need to be honest about their own past also.
Let’s remember that the Catholic Church has not institutionaled violence against others. It is NOT a tenet of our faith. On the other hand, fatwas ARE institutionalized in Islam. It is essential to their faith. So is jihad. No recognized mullah or imam has stood up and condemned violence. Violence is a central part of the religion of Islam.
The New Testament surely doesn’t advocate violence & neither does Christ. It’s not a tenet of our Faith. But the Church is comprised of broken human beings like you & me & Church authorities have had a hand in instances of sectarian violence in the past.
Sectarian violence is not built into the Church but it’s definitely escaped a few times.
The Crusades were a belated response to Islamic aggression against and persecution of Christians.
The Crusades were a perfectly justifiable and moral response to over 850 Muslim attacks in Western Europe. Your ignorance of history is appalling.
Several scholars have debunked the long-peddled untruth about the Crusades. See for example, this debunking by military historian R. Ibrahim in
https://www.raymondibrahim.com/2015/02/12/the-truth-about-the-crusades/
And in this interview https://www.raymondibrahim.com/2024/10/04/video-the-truth-about-the-crusades/
Ibrahim observes, “The truth, of course, is very different from the Fake History being peddled by the NYT and friends. The Crusades were a militant response to more than four centuries of jihadist aggression that saw three-quarters of the Christian world swallowed up by Islam. The particular Muslim invasions (between 1071 and 1095) that occasioned the First Crusade were actually motivated by noble — indeed, altruistic — sentiments. During that period and in the decades before it, hundreds of thousands of Eastern Christians (Armenians, Greeks, Syrians, etc.) were killed or enslaved, and tens of thousands of churches were ritually desecrated, torched, and/or turned into mosques. Think what “ISIS” did to Christians and other minorities in Iraq and Syria in the 2010s, but times a hundred, and for decades.
Nor were atrocities limited to Asia Minor or its indigenous Christians: “As the Turks were ruling the lands of Syria and Palestine, they inflicted injuries on [European] Christians who went to pray in Jerusalem, beat them, pillaged them, [and] levied the poll tax [jizya],” writes Michael the Syrian, a contemporary. Moreover, “every time they saw a caravan of Christians, particularly of those from Rome and the lands of Italy, they made every effort to cause their death in diverse ways.” Such was the fate of one German pilgrimage to Jerusalem. According to one of the pilgrims:
Accompanying this journey was a noble abbess of graceful body and of a religious outlook. Setting aside the cares of the sisters committed to her and against the advice of the wise, she undertook this great and dangerous pilgrimage. The pagans captured her, and in the sight of all, these shameless men raped her until she breathed her last, to the dishonor of all Christians. Christ’s enemies performed such abuses and others like them on the Christians.”
See also this scholarly interview by CWR of a professor on the subject of Christian Slavery under Islam which covers the origins of the Crusades as the Christian Greek Roman Emperor Alexius I Comnenos called for help from the West against the Muslim attacks against the Christian Roman Empire and how Pope Urban II gave him this help by organizing the First Crusade:
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2020/12/16/the-forgotten-history-of-christian-slavery-under-islam/
https://www.thepostil.com/author/dario-fernandez-morera/
There was enslavement of Christians and all sorts of other people by the Berbers, Arabs, and Ottomans.
Over a million Europeans were kidnapped into slavery but many times more Africans were marched into slavery on the Trans Sahara route. Some were sold to Christians as well as to Muslims and Jews. Slavery was an equal opportunity venture.
Please continue to pray for us it is our mother land.
I prayed for Africa just this morning.
🙂
Islam is incompatible with civilized society. To expect anything else is a fool’s errand.
See this scholarly interview on Christian Slavery under Islam by Father Connolly of CWR, with a contemporary illustration of the slave market in Islamic Constantinople:
https://www.thepostil.com/christian-slavery-under-islam-a-conversation-with-dario-fernandez-morera/
and historian R. Ibrahim account of just now another atrocity vs Christians in Egypt:
https://www.raymondibrahim.com/2025/05/29/video-nightmarish-attack-on-egypts-christians-oh-world-do-you-see/?jetpack_skip_subscription_popup
Video Nightmarish Attack on Egypt Christians “Oh World—Do You See?!”
Didn’t US Congressman Scott Perry tell the world that USAID was the main sponsor of terrorism in Sub-Saharan Africa. Why is everyone pretending about it? What is General Langley and his men in Africom doing in the midst of the genocide going on in Nigeria and the rest of the region. You can tell that the US does not want Africa to grow. Imagine that Gen Langley lied against Ibrahim Traore( the only good news from that region) in order to find reason to invade BurkinaFaso and destroy the little good the young man has done. What a shame!
It’s hard for me to understand exactly what’s going on in Burkina Faso today but it does seem there’s more alliance with Russia & less with France. Very sad overall health & well being situation there. I wish more was being done to alleviate that.
It is absurd and a traversed reply on the martyrdom of Christians by their brothers from Ibrahim’s son Ishmael.The article under scrutiny is between the two faiths not nations. Was Scott Perry advancing a religious issue or a state’s interest? In the so-called Holy Quran, some Ayas expressly recommend the slaying of non-believers, refer to others as infidels not worthy of living,recommend the enslaving of non believers!
Islam is divided between those that engage in terrorism and those that support terrorism. To denounce terrorism in the public domain is to sign a death warrant.