In Texas, a hospital can remove a patient’s life sustaining treatment if a doctor and hospital ethics committee deems treatment “medically inappropriate.” If the family cannot find another care facility in 10 days, the hospital will end the patient’s life—regardless of the patient’s or family’s explicit wishes to continue treatment.
Through your support of Texas Right to Life’s Patient Advocacy team, you help families in the middle of these crises.
By giving to Texas Right to Life’s Patient Advocacy Fund you equip patients and families to navigate and overcome time sensitive and medically complex cases. Whenever one of these horrific cases occur, our patient advocates immediately call the family to provide information, answer their questions, educate them on the 10-Day process, and inform them of their rights under Texas law.
Oftentimes, we call on our nurse consultant to jump in on short notice and evaluate medical records. The Patient Advocacy Fund also enlists Pro-Life attorneys to attend important meetings with the family, communicate with the hospital on the family’s behalf, and fight for the patient’s and family’s wishes to be respected.
Our patient advocacy team receives calls at all stages of the 10-Day process. A family may call in the early stages, when the hospital is just threatening to use the 10-Day Rule against them. We may have 24 hours’ notice of a hospital ethics committee meeting about to begin, or we may receive a desperate last-minute call on day 9 of the 10-day countdown.
Your generosity just recently saved Jose M., a 75-year-old veteran, from forced death in a West Texas hospital.
When Jose M.’s family began receiving unwanted pressure to sign a Do-Not-Resuscitate Order (DNR), they called Texas Right to Life, and a trained patient advocate began counseling them.
A month later, Jose’s alarmed family learned the hospital was going to use the deadly 10-Day Rule, to place a countdown on his life. Jose’s family knew about the 10-Day Rule because our patient advocates had warned them to be on alert for it. When Jose’s wife and daughter were handed a notice that a hospital ethics committee meeting was being convened, they understood a 10-Day countdown was about to begin. Immediately, they called their Texas Right to Life patient advocate and with just two days until the meeting, our team shifted into full gear.
While our patient advocates assisted Jose’s family, we enlisted the help of our nurse consultant to quickly review medical records. Texas Right to Life was able to provide an attorney for Jose’s family who began corresponding with the hospital’s lawyer. Our Pro-Life attorney was able to delay the meeting, buying more time and assuring that the hospital would not issue its decision on a Friday, thereby averting two of the ten days being consumed by a weekend. When the meeting commenced, our attorney was there to represent Jose M.’s family.
The presence of an attorney representing the family in the meeting allowed our team to drill down exactly what treatment the hospital was seeking to remove, which helped us know how to advocate for the family to retain their decision-making authorities.
We ensured that the hospital did not remove Jose’s ventilator until he passed away naturally. Jose’s family was able to spend their final days with him in peace, knowing they had not allowed him to be killed by an anti-Life law. This was only possible because of your financial generosity that funds our patient advocacy efforts.
Your financial gifts make it so that YOU leap into action to help patients like Jose M. and his family during their most difficult moments.
Thank you for fighting for and SAVING vulnerable patients across Texas!