(LifeSiteNews) — Pro-life advocates praised a new law in Texas that strengthens protections for hospital patients while encouraging further reform.
Signed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott earlier this month, HB 3162 amends the state’s notorious medical futility law, the Texas Advance Directives Act (TADA), which allowed hospitals to remove patients from life support against their will after just 10 days, regardless of a patient’s wishes or even whether he was conscious.
Under the TADA, physicians and hospital committees could withdraw a patient’s life-sustaining care at their discretion and could do so based on subjective “quality of life” judgments. If a hospital decided to end a patient’s life, his family had just 10 days to find a new facility, a policy known as the “10-Day Rule.”
But HB 3162, which was authored by Republican Rep. Stephanie Klick and takes effect on September 1, makes significant changes to the TADA, including extending the 10-day transfer period to 25 days and banning hospitals from ending care based on “quality of life” determinations or an unrelated disability.
The new law also requires hospitals to perform certain procedures, such as tracheostomies and percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomies, if a patient needs them to transfer to another facility. The 25-day countdown would not begin until a hospital provides such procedures, according to Texas Right to Life, a pro-life group that has fought the TADA for years.
HB 3162 furthermore allows a patient’s surrogate to revoke a do-not-resuscitate order issued by a doctor and prohibits hospitals from removing the life support of someone who is not “declared incompetent” or “mentally or physically incapable of communication.”
The legislation “restores life-affirming values in healthcare by amending the Texas Advance Directives Act,” Republican Texas Sen. Drew Springer said. “Texas is dedicated to protecting defenseless patients and their right to life!”
Springer, who sponsored the law, also noted that HB 3162 reforms the hospital committee meeting process, requiring at least seven days’ before a meeting about whether to discontinue treatment.
Texas Right to Life likewise praised HB 3162 as a “great step forward” but stressed the need for additional measures to protect patients.
“We celebrate the biggest step yet in protecting Texas patients. For 20 years, Texas Right to Life has worked with lawmakers to repeal or reform the deadly 10-Day Rule,” Texas Right to Life President Dr. John Seago said in a press release. “Now, with the efforts of Representative Stephanie Klick and Senators Drew Springer and Bryan Hughes, countless families will find more relief in this incremental, yet important, legislation.”
The organization added that “Texas patients will still be in danger” unless lawmakers address “additional needs,” including eliminating the countdown period entirely, improving discrimination protections for disabled patients, and guaranteeing “impartial review by a judge.”
Meanwhile, the Texas Medical Association, which strongly supports the TADA, described HB 3162 as “compromise legislation” and a “hard-fought win” that “protects the state’s existing statute governing do-not-attempt-resuscitation (DNAR) orders and includes DNAR process and liability reforms for physicians.”
Dr. Mark Casanova, a member of the Texas Medical Association’s Council on Health Service Organizations, said that the “detailed negotiations that went into developing the legislation hopefully will prevent recurring end-of-life battles from resurfacing in future sessions,” according to the association.
Texas Advance Directives Act nearly led to death of disabled girl
The TADA gained notoriety in recent years due to several high-profile cases of Texas hospitals attempting to starve or suffocate patients against their or their families’ wishes.
One such patient was Tinslee Lewis, a girl who was born premature at Fort Worth’s Cook Children’s Medical Center in 2019 with a rare congenital heart defect and lung disease.
Ten months after her birth, a hospital committee decided to end her life by taking her off of a ventilator, claiming that she had no chance of improvement. The hospital also refused to perform a tracheostomy on her, which is standard medical practice, preventing her from transferring to a new medical center.
But Tinslee’s mother fiercely opposed the decision to let her daughter die and released videos showing the girl awake and moving. She successfully fought Cook County Medical Center up to the Texas Supreme Court, which ruled in 2021 that the hospital could not withdraw Tinslee’s treatment.
Tinslee, now four years old, was sent home from Cook Children’s Medical Center in April 2022.
Despite widespread controversy surrounding the TADA, the law has notably had the strong support of Catholic bishops and hospitals. The Texas Conference of Catholic Bishops (TCCB) has filed friend-of-the-court briefs defending the law and attacking Texas Right to Life for opposing it, as LifeSiteNews previously reported.
The bishops — with the notable exception of Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler – also publicly backed Cook Children’s Medical Center in its efforts to end the life of Tinslee Lewis, a move that sparked outrage among faithful Catholics.
The TCCB endorsed HB 3162 in May, after opposing similar reform efforts in past years, saying that the legislation “was developed after months of extensive negotiation.”
RELATED