A Houston-area physician talked to Texas Right to Life last week about how the medical community in Texas has lost respect for Life, even going so far as to deny medical treatment to patients based on their own twisted sense of medical ethics.
“I, personally, would not trust a doctor to make the ethical decisions for anyone in my family,” Dr. Mary Catharine Maxian told Texas Right to Life. “Unfortunately, a lot of times, doctors will think they know what’s best [for the patient]from an ethical standpoint. I don’t really know how they can know that, but they will try to impose that upon patients and upon families, and you have to be really careful these days.”
Dr. Maxian also explained that while you can’t trust a physician to always make the best decisions for your loved ones, you can’t trust the hospital’s Ethics Committee, either.
Despite the name, Ethics Committees aren’t always staffed by ethical people who respect Life. These committees have the power to deny patients medical treatment despite the wishes of the patients and their families.
Dr. Maxian is one of many Pro-Life physicians who Texas Right to Life calls upon to give expert opinions when patients in Texas have been denied medical treatment, or are in danger of being denied treatment. She sits on her own hospital’s Ethics Committee, and is thankful for the additional ethical training she received from Texas Right to Life when she was a new doctor.
“Supporting Texas Right to Life . . . means supporting Pro-Life education of not only college students, but medical students,” she said. “It also means supporting patients’ rights, because if a family comes into a situation where they don’t agree with the ethical decisions made by the physicians, they rely upon Texas Right to Life to go to bat for them, even legally, if necessary.”
“Patients are depending upon the work of Texas Right to Life,” said Dr. Maxian. “And any way we can be supporting Texas Right to Life, we should be doing so. So I hope people come to the Celebration of Life.”