"This person suffering from hereditary
defects costs the people 60,000
Reichmarks during his lifetime. People,
that is your money. Read 'New People'."
Posted on 08/21/2006 3:43:35 PM PDT by wagglebee
DALLAS, Texas, August 21, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The children of a comatose woman are challenging in court the “compassionate reasons” for a Texas hospital’s decision to remove their mother’s life-saving treatment, asserting that their mother, a devout Baptist woman, never would consent to anyone but God ending her life.
On August 8, just days after 61-year-old Ruthie Webster's insurance stopped full coverage of her long-term care, the Regency Hospital’s bioethics committee in North Dallas, Texas, unanimously told the Webster family that they would discontinue life-preserving dialysis treatment for their mother within 10 days. The hospital claimed that Ruthie Webster's physician "has seen no appreciable change in your mother's medical condition" and that continued treatment was an exercise in futility.
The decision shocked family members, since their mother is not brain-dead, but comatose, and has been making slow progress, breathing now on her own without a ventilator, ever since she suffered a bad reaction after undergoing kidney dialysis in June rendering her mostly unresponsive. The family, however, has said their mother told them to take care of her in such a situation, saying that she believes only God has the right to take life away.
"My mom spent her life in the church. She always felt like, 'Who are we to decide? God decides,'” said Lacresia Webster on Thursday. "If this is the way she's going to be, she's still my mom. I'm not giving up on her."
However, the Regency Hospital board defends its decision citing a 1999 statute in Texas' Health and Safety Code that gives a hospital’s ethics committee the last word about continuing a patient's care. Under the law, if the ethics committee decides to end a patient’s medical care, including life-saving treatment, a family has only 10 days to transfer to another medical facility that will care for the patient.
Although Regency has offered to help find another medical facility for Ruthie Webster in Atlanta or Indiana, the family does not want to move their mother, unless they can help it.
"I find it hard to believe this is a law, because you're basically saying if this person is a burden to someone, let's just kill them, and that's unacceptable," Lacresia Webster told Dallas’s NBC 5.
"When God is ready for her, God will take her, not anyone else," Lacresia Webster vowed.
Intent on keeping this vow, Lacresia and her family have enlisted the aid of pro-bono attorneys who have filed a lawsuit against Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott challenging the constitutionality of the state's “end-of-life” law. The family then won a temporary restraining order imposed on Regency Hospital to keep Ruthie Webster alive there until a hearing set for August 28.
Robert Bennet, a lawyer for the Websters said the law “allows a doctor to completely ignore what I’ve told them I wanted to do.” He added, “Mrs. Webster was a Baptist. She told her daughters very clearly that God would take her when it's her time to go. This statute violates her freedom of religion."
"My mother, she's breathing on her own, just like you and I are today," said Helena Webster Hill, who lives in Atlanta. "As long as she's fighting to live, we believe we ought to stand with her and fight with her."
We can't count on the govt to protect people. Not even at the borders.
Anyone of the street can become a ethicist these days. It's a meaningless profession. There's no standards. Some ethicists could believe cannibalism is fine, for example. Relativism rules the day.
Why Atlanta or Indiana? Is that where the kids live?
I asked: "Has the family offered to pay for continued care at Regency? "
You replied: "No. The family believes the money to care for their mother will appear out of thin air. They are unwilling to transfer her to a hospital that will care for her, gratis."
The Mom may be a Baptist, but her children are Democrats.
This situation is pretty common in hospitals. The insurance will drop the patient because of a lack of steady noticable improvement, the money dries up and the hospital treating. I dont see how this case is any different from the hundreds that happen every month across the country. They are trying to make it into a religious battle, but the hospital has been very reasonable in my opinion. A hospital is a business, it cant operate by letting people stay for free. This is a matter of the family coming up with the money, finding new insurance, or moving to another hospital.
I can't think of to many things the government hasn't screwed up once they get involved in something. Including heath care. Every single thing they touch gets expensive, very expensive.
What do you mean culture of death? The family can move the patient for care elsewhere if they wish. There's no pleasing some people.
Doesn't the article say that she would not survive without a dialysis machine?
That's it in a nutshell...watch out though..you're in BIG TROUBLE with the life at any cost brigade here.
So, who pays to keep this COMATOSE woman alive?
But you insist on doing this in Dallas, and not Atlanta. This article relies heavily on the Dallas Morning News article, sourced below. It conveniently leaves out the following two paragraphs:
Mr. Bennett said that so far, Regency has taken great care of Mrs. Webster. All of her bedsores healed, he said. And in letters to family members since the decision to remove Mrs. Webster's treatment, hospital officials offered to help them seek another facility for her. The hospital has informally agreed to cover the costs of the move, Mr. Bennett said.
But for the Webster children, who are considering moving their mother to facilities in Atlanta or Indiana, it's the principle that matters. They don't want to be forced to move their mother. And they certainly don't want anyone outside of the family deciding when it's time to end treatments.
Yea, now it's the hospital's fault...PEOPLE DIE. YOU WILL DIE ONE DAY.
What exactly do you think that hospitals are?
Who do you propose pay for this? How do you intend to compel them to?
Is there any evidence of this? I didn't see anything in the article that necessarily indicated negligence on the part of the hospital.
Renal dialysis.
There is no evidence. But, if something bad happens to some poor soul, you can bet big hospital caused it.
I dunno.... There's a small but very loud group of Republicans on this site who believe people should be kept alive indefinately on machines no matter what prognosis for recovery, and hospitals have no right to be paid for providing such care.
Mom's kids seem to think God will magically make everything all right and they don't have to pay for anything.
The message of God is that sometimes God says no.
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