Texas Right to Life's Death Panels

 

 

Texas Right to Life's Death Panels
By
James Scott Trimm

 

 

Back 1999, The Texas Legislature unanimously passed the draconian Texas Advance Directives Act (TADA). Under TADA, when a doctor and a patient (or his/her surrogate) disagree about appropriate end-of-life treatment, the disagreement is taken before an ethics review committee.

TADA only provides a ten day period for the patient's family either to find another facility to accept the patient or to obtain a court injunction to extend their life. If no other facility will accept the patient within the period of time and the family is unable to obtain a court injunction, then the hospital is legally permitted to withdraw life sustaining-treatment from the patient, and simply let them die, regardless of their wishes, their living will, or the wishes of their family.  Folks, this is one of those “death panels” about you have been warned.  

 

In the past, Texas Alliance for Life ( a fake "Pro-Life" organization that exists only to give cover to candidates which are not Pro-Life) was the secret supporter of this system, while Texas Right to Life was fighting against it.

When opportunities to reform this act have presented themselves, Pojman’s Texas Alliance for Life has run interference.  For example in the 84^th Texas Legislative session (2015) Texas Alliance for Life actually supported House Bill 2351, which was supposed to be a bill to reform these death panels, but in reality this Bill only perpetuated the death panels.  

 

Texas Right to Life wrote about this bill (Which Pojman and TAL supported):

HB 2351 by Representative Patricia Harless (R-Spring) will also be heard today in the House Committee on State Affairs.  The stated purpose of HB 2351 is to reform hospital ethics committees (death panels), which currently hold unlimited power to remove medical treatment from patients after providing ten days notice to the patient or family.  Under the current Texas Advance Directives Act, hospitals may remove life-sustaining treatments including a ventilator, dialysis, food, and hydration from patients, even if the patient or their family has expressed a desire to continue such care and treatment.  Treatment can be withdrawn from any patient for any reason, including discrimination against a patient who is elderly, terminally ill, or disabled.


Rather than actually reforming the draconian ten-day law, HB 2351 instructs the hospital committees to write and circulate their own regulations about conflicts of interest for their own ethics committees about their own decisions on withdrawing treatment from patients.  HB 2351 also instructs facilities to write and implement policies for withdrawing treatment from patients with disabilities.  However, this section establishes yet another dangerous loophole through this provision by adding: “unless the disability is relevant in determining whether a medical or surgical intervention is medically appropriate.”  HB 2351 does not actually provide specific details about what the policies should be, just that hospitals should adopt policies on these topics.
 (Committee to hear dangerous bills masquerading as Pro-Life, April 8, 2015)

On the morning of December 23rd, Texas Right to Life announced the passing of 46-year-old Chris Dunn. A Houston Methodist Hospital panel ( a so-called “death panel) determined that his life was not worth living and that his condition was not even worth diagnosing or treating, Chris has now succumbed to his untreated illness.

Just before Thanksgiving, the hospital gave ten days' notice that they would be removing Chris's breathing assistance, but because of legal intervention, breathing assistance was never removed.  Chris's lawyers were able to get a restraining order.  Then guardianship was contested by an employee of the hospital.  However in all of this the hospital did not treat Chris's actual illness, but simply let him die untreated, while they were fighting to remove his oxygen. 

 

 

In defending their silence on the Pro-Life issue of the life of Chris Dunn, Joe Pojman's Texas Alliance for Life (TAL) finally spoke.  On their Facebook page TAL wrote:

Many pro-life individuals have been gravely concerned about the tragic case of Mr. Chris Dunn, a 46-year-old man who was admitted into a Houston hospital in mid-October and was on a ventilator. Some media accounts and a pro-life organization misrepresented the situation as one in which the hospital intended to kill Mr. Dunn by removing the respirator that was considered necessary to sustain Mr. Dunn's life. The claims were made that the hospital had judged that Mr. Dunn's life was not worth living….

To help correct the record and to explain the ethical issues involved with end-of-life care, Dr. Beverly Nuckols, a family physician and board member of Texas Alliance for Life, and Deirdre Cooper, our public policy analyst, authored the following article on Public Discourse. We highly recommend every pro-lifer reads it [sic].

In defending Methodist Hospital’s Death Panel’s decision to discontinue life-sustaining treatment from Chris Dunn, Nuckols and Cooper wrote:

"It is entirely possible, even plausible, that the doctors—and Dunn’s father, in his role as surrogate—could have understood Dunn’s death as an unintended but foreseen side effect of a morally legitimate object. That object, by their own profession, was to stop the suffering caused by the treatment to sustain his life."

(Balancing the Rights of Patients and Doctors: Another Perspective on a Tragic Case; by  Deirdre Cooper and Beverly Nuckols )

That’s right, a TAL board member and the TAL public policy analyst just declared that "to stop the sufferuing caused by ... treatment to sustain ... life" is "a morally legitimate object."! 

 

For many years Texas Right to Life fought to end death panels in Texas, while Texas Alliance for Life ran interference.  But now, all of that has changed.  The old Texas Right to Life we once knew and supported, no longer exists.

In the recent 87th Legislative Session a bill was filed in the Texas House to end the Ten Day Rule with it's Death Panels, in Texas.  The Bill was HB2609 which was assigned to the Health and Human Services Committee, chaired by Stephanie Klick.  Klick intentionally slow walked this bill, making sure that it "died in Calendars".  She held the bill 28 days before even giving it a hearing.  (By contrast she gave a hearing to HB2213 , a bill to protect exotic animals, on day nine).  

 

 

 

She then held the bill another two weeks before bringing the bill back up to the committee for a vote.  Even after that, she held the bill two more weeks on her desk, before walking it down the hall and submitting it to calendars.  After 68 days, Klick finally submitted the bill to calendars, knowing that by that point it would "die in calendars", and never reach the House Floor! Klick slow walked this bill do death, and guaranteed that death panels, like the one that took the life of Chris Dunn, would continue in Texas.

 

 

So what did Texas Right to Life do?  They joined Texas Alliance for Life in together endorsing Stephanie Klick.  Texas Right to Life even called her a "Pro-Life Hero".  Texas Right to Life joined Texas Alliance for Life in campaigning for Klick, and against her opponent David Lowe who opposes the ten day rule and death panels and supports the right to life from conception to natural death.

 

Texas still has death panels, and we can now thank Texas Right to Life for joining Texas Alliance for Life in endorsing and campaigning for the RINO politicians that keep the Death Panels in Texas!  They are now Texas Right to Life's Death Panels.  Texas Right to life has now joined the ranks of other "fake pro-life" organizations like Texas Alliance for Life.

If you really support protecting the right to life from conception to natural death, do not donate to, or support these fake pro-life groups.  You should instead support Abolish Abortion Texas, an organization that truly defends the right to life, from conception to natural death.

 

 

 

Klicks Dirty Trick's - Evil Prevailed Last Night

 

 

Klicks Dirty Trick's - Evil Prevailed Last Night
By
James Scott Trimm

It has been said that the only thing necessary for evil to prevail, is for good men to do (or say) nothing.  So let it be with the recent election for House District 91.  I am supposed to move on, perhaps even congratulate Mrs. Klick on her victory.  But I cannot do that.  The world needs to know and remember, that evil prevailed.

David Lowe, a decorated American combat veteran, ran a clean, issue based campaign.  A campaign of which he could be proud.  He knocked on 9,000 doors and talked one on one with voters,  On Primary day, most of Klick's constituents voted against her, bringing her into a runoff with David Lowe.

The serious dishonesty from the Klick campaign began when they began airing TV and radio ads that played an out of context audio quote from David Lowe, cut off in the middle of a sentence, to make it appear David Lowe is pro-choice, which then immediately cut to pleasant music and "but pro-life champion Stephanie Klick..."  In fact the quote was cut off before Lowe said the words "all we need to do is abolish abortion in Texas,"  This dirty trick was bad enough, but it was nothing compared to what came later.

The Klick camp waited until five days before early runoff voting began, and then released an all out assault of blatant lies about David Lowe.  Mailers and Facebook ads declared that Lowe owned pornographic websites, had invested in pornographic businesses , was involved in "human trafficking" and that this had been "uncovered by law enforcement".  All of these things were patently false.  David Lowe was never owned or operated a pornographic website, never invested in a pornographic business, was certainly never involved in human trafficking, nor was he involved in any criminal activity uncovered by law enforcement.  All of these things, stated by Facebook ads and mailers that bombarded the voters of HD 91 just as early voting began.  This was intentionally launched just before and during early voting, so that there would be no time to effectively respond to the large number of lies.

The truth is that over ten years ago, David Lowe engaged in armature "Domain Name Peculation", an investment scheme of purchasing domain names and holding them, hoping to sell them at a higher value.  This is an internet analogy to land speculation.  At no time did David operate any pornographic websites.  The domain names remained "parked" waiting for resale,  David owned literally hundreds of domain names at the time. which he bought and traded in bulk, the vast majority of which were innocuous domain names.  However a domain name is not a website, nor is it a business, any more than a physical address is a building (it may only be an empty lot).  And even a bad sounding domain name, can be used simply to drive internet traffic.  One could, for example. purchase a naughty sounding domain name, and point it to a Christian website, in an effort to reach the lost.  Or the domain "findsomesex.com" could used as a clever name for a business that gives sonograms and tells you the sex of your baby.  The point is, that a url is not, in itself a website of a business.  

The fact is that the Klick camp launched a campaign of outright lies about David Lowe in a last minute, dirty tricks campaign, and sadly, our Tarrant County Sheriff Bill Waybourn, participated in this campaign of lies, whole heatedly!

The sad fact is that the trust of the voters was violated and this election was stolen from the voters just as sure as if the ballot box was stuffed.  

I am supposed to keep my mouth shut about this steal and take this loss gracefully.  After all, if I say anything about these things, it is "sour grapes".  But far more importantly, my silence is all evil needs to prevail and propagate,

 Evil prevailed, but I am making sure that it has done so in broad daylight, not under the cover of darkness!