Texans, we still have a problem. And, we need you to act very quickly right now! A child's life is in imminent danger of being ended tomorrow through the use of the insidious euthanasia law ("TADA" or the "10-Day Rule" or "10-Day Law") in Texas. Please read on and contact the hospital immediately and ask them to spare her life!
Texas Right to Life, as usual, is leading the effort to save Baby Tinslee. TRTL describes her condition and provides the contact information that you need as follows:
Baby Tinslee is a 9-month-old girl with congenital heart disease and is breathing with the assistance of a ventilator. She is sedated but conscious. Cook Children’s Fort Worth Hospital informed Tinslee’s mother, Trinity, on October 31 that they would pull the plug on her daughter against her directive in 10 days, scheduling her to die tomorrow, November 10, under the Texas 10-Day Rule. The hospital committee cited no physical health reason for their decision to seize Tinslee’s ventilator against her mother’s will but instead cited their own “quality of life” judgments. Now, Baby Tinslee’s mother is in a race against the clock to save her daughter. Texas Right to Life provided a lawyer to defend the patient after the family contacted us for help, but the Texas 10-Day Rule legally allows this form of euthanasia. The hospital needs to hear from you!
Call Cook Children’s now! Ask to speak to administrator Stan Davis and tell him to save Baby Tinslee Lewis! 682-885-4000 or stan.davis@cookchildrens.org.
(Emphasis added.)
As you know, the Texas Advance Directives Act ("TADA") is still law and it allows a hospital to withdraw life-sustaining care against your will with 10 days notice. There is no due process. No appeal. No review. It is very, very difficult to get more time from a court and very difficult - usually impossible - to get a transfer to another facility in this amount of time. I wish I could tell you this is unusual. It is not. Other babies have been killed by Texas hospitals using this law. This is euthanasia! These quality of life decisions belong to the family - and only the family.
As you will recall, there was an excellent bill, SB 2089, that would have made great strides into righting much of what is wrong with this now 20 year old law. As you will recall, it passed the Senate, but the House leadership killed it. As I see it, those who made the decisions to kill that bill as well as those who lobbied them to do so and who opposed SB 2089 - the ones I refer to as the Usual Suspects which includes the Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops (all of whom flat out support euthanasia) - may soon have more blood on their hands.
Because of these anti-life forces, right now in Fort Worth, nine month old Baby Tinslee is set to be killed tomorrow by having her life-sustaining treatment withdrawn by Cook Children's Hospital. She has congenital heart disease but is not brain dead. In fact, as you can see above in video taken just this morning she responsive even while sedated. (Again, even if she were brain dead, I could not countenance the imposition of involuntary passive euthanasia.)
NOTE: Anticipating what TADA supporters always say in defense of these things, let me nip that in the bud. There are no assertions that anyone's conscience is being pricked by continuing to care for this child. I have never heard that used in a hearing as a reason. That only ever comes up during legislative testimony by lobbyists for euthanasia and the occasional brief in court. Even were that the case, there are many, many doctors in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. Other doctors who are pro-life and understand who makes what decisions would continue care for her, I am certain.
Anticipating another thing they might say - she's suffering. Actually, that was not a given reason. Also, killing people because of suffering is the very definition of euthanasia. Yeah, it is. Mercy killing is also, ironically, prohibited by TADA. See Tex. Health & Safety Code Sec. 166.050.
Anticipating and responding to what others have said or asked about the role of money here, let me address that as well. Doctors and hospitals always vehemently deny that money plays any role in any decision they make. In one place on social media, one lady said she called and mentioned money and the receptionist defensively said money had nothing to do with their decisions. I've been in cases where the intended TADA victim had insurance or would qualify for Medicare or Medicaid soon if given enough time. To be honest, I actually don't think money is the biggest motivator for these cases for the decision-makers.
And, let me just say this - I don't care if money is the issue - you don't kill people. And let me go one step further: If you think that just because someone may be poor that they deserve to die sooner, you need to check yourself. That's a terribly elitist, eugenicist attitude to have. Only the well-to-do are deserving of life? Only the most healthy? The most educated? The most....? What other qualifications will you set? Will race or ethnicity play a role? Religion? Gender? Genetics? Where does it end? Read history. You're literally in Nazi territory there. God help you. You'd better step back and re-evaluate things. Like right now. And, yes, I've been seeing things like this on social media, including by those who love to say, "I'm 100% pro-life but...." No, honey, you're not.
In my opinion, people decided that this child does not deserve to live because she is ill. I think it likely is a "quality of life" decision, just as they said. It's philosophical. It's eugenics plain and simple. And it's diabolical. I've heard doctors and hospital administrator-types say things like this myself in other cases. I've heard and read advocates of TADA and proponents of it say just that. And, their actions and advocacy scream it louder than any blog post or tweet could. This little baby who is ill should be put down like a dog according to them. No! No! No!
Surely, you can see how wrong this is and the long-term consequences of it. I don't care who supports it, if they were a cardinal's hat, have a Ph.D. or an M.D. or whatever else. It's just wrong. In Europe we see the next phase of this already - a duty to die. But more on that another day.
But wrong as it may be, this is now well-established law and medical practice in Texas and beyond. You think you're safe? Think again. You're one heart attack, car accident, brain aneurism, or God only knows what away from being in this situation yourself. Or your spouse. Or your children.
Our so-called "pro-life" Republican legislature and governor could have done something about this months ago and it would have been effective law by now. But they didn't. What does that say about them? By their fruits...
Frankly, I think this last session made it pretty darn clear that the majority of those in the House who claim they are pro-life - and I'm being generous here - really have only a nodding acquaintance with the term. (It took quite a lot of effort to get the Senate to do the right thing, but they finally did.) By their actions and inaction, the House leadership and others deliberately killed not only SB 2089, but SB 1033, which would have stopped discriminatory abortion of the preborn (another form of eugenics). Very, very few who were not in leadership, as far as I can tell, were even working behind the scenes to try to get anything done. They've certainly been hiding from not just the pro-life organization, but other conservative orgs and the grassroots. It's all quite telling.
And while I'm at it, I'll just say this, too. While the Texas governorship is a weak position relative to the legislature and compared to how other state governments are structured, there is room for executive leadership here. Sadly, we've seen time and again that Governor Abbott is no Governor Perry when it comes to pro-life leadership. When pro-life legislation didn't get passed in the regular session in 2012, Perry called a Special Session where it did. When a bill was moving in the session in 2012 that would have made TADA worse, he made sure that once it was dead, it was dead. Whatever other problems there may have been with Perry, he did the right thing on these life issues. I cannot say the same about his predecessor (who gave us TADA) and his successor (who won't do anything to help get rid of it). As I mentioned in my last post, I never had much confidence in Abbott. I would love for him to prove me wrong.
But right now, Baby Tinslee and her family need your voice. Be a voice for those who cannot advocate for themselves or by themselves. Fill up the voicemail and email inbox of Stan Davis. Leave messages with the staff. Then, spend as much time in prayer tonight and tomorrow as you can for this family, the hospital staff, our "leaders", those at Texas Right to Life and who are working to advocate for this family, and for the overall state of things. That ought to keep us all busy and out of trouble.
Thanks for reading!
