On the frontlines for life
That Baby Emilio case highlights the forces at work in this country both for and against sustaining life.
This WaPo piece focuses attention on the larger battle behind one individual case.
Emilio’s case has drawn interest and support nationwide, including from the siblings of Terri Schiavo, the Florida woman who was in a persistent vegetative state and who died in 2005 after doctors, acting on a court order, removed her life-sustaining feeding tube.
Texas’s six-year-old “futile-care” law is one of two in the country that allow a hospital’s ethics committee to declare the care of a terminally ill patient to be of no benefit and to discontinue care within a certain time frame. The patient’s family or guardian must be informed in advance of the ethics committee meeting and must be allowed to participate. The family must also be given 10 days to find a medical facility willing to accept their terminal relative. After that period, the hospital may withdraw life support. Virginia gives a family 14 days to transfer a patient once a futile-care decision is made.
According to a 2005 report by the National Right to Life Committee, 11 states require that a patient be given life-sustaining treatment until a transfer is completed, without prescribing a deadline. Fifteen states and the District of Columbia have laws that require treatment pending a patient’s transfer but do not define the type of treatment. Twenty-four states and territories have laws addressing the issue but are ambiguous about treatment pending a transfer.
“Texas has the worst law in the country because the families have no recourse,” said Elizabeth Graham, director of Texas Right to Life. “In Texas, doctors only provide treatment for 10 days, and if it there’s no transfer, they pull the plug.”
Do you know what your state laws provide…or require?
