In late February, Texas Right to Life was invited to a discussion about reforming Chapter 166 of the Health and Safety Code, known as the Texas Advance Directives Act or the “Ten-Day Law.” Worth noting is that Texas Right to Life is the only organization invited to this particular parlay that has actually helped hundreds of patients and families navigate the draconian statutory ten-day transfer process.
The goal of Texas Right to Life, the oldest and by far the largest Pro-Life organization in the Lone Star state, is and has always been to enact the most protections for hospitalized patients, the vulnerable, the unborn, leaving to question the motives of other organizations whose officers and directors have not personally assisted or sat beside even one ailing Texan facing the deadly ten-day clock.
Patient autonomy must ultimately trump institutional autonomy, or the innocent will die. We will never relinquish this foundational Pro-Life principle.
Since some who were copied on the email invitation have a history of slanderous and libelous ad hominem attacks against Texas Right to Life, our attorneys were consulted on how to proceed. Additionally, some of the organizations invited have supported coordinated attacks on free speech and testified in favor of the new, overreaching rules adopted by the Texas Ethics Commission in October of 2014. These new rules are seen as part of a national effort by the establishment to silence grassroots conservatives and the organizations that represent them.
One new rule, interpreting Section 254.261 of the Election Code, states that “acting in concert” means acting in cooperation or consultation with another, or under an express or implied agreement, to pursue a common activity. Hence, working “together to accomplish improvements of existing state law” surrounding denial of treatment legislation, a sorely needed effort, would meet the common activity portion of the TEC’s new acting in concert definition. In fact, this singular focus outlined in the email invitation would evidence the common activity of the participating entities.
With the grave, legitimate concerns about the singular focus and acting in concert, our attorneys were prepared to attend this meeting, set for Monday, March 9, at 2:00pm, to discuss possible legal frameworks within which discussions of policy could occur without violating TEC’s onerous broad new rule.
However, someone in this group of TEC supporters leaked the correspondences (that were sent in good faith to the person who invited Texas Right to Life) to Scott Braddock, a reporter of the far-left Quorum Report (QR). Braddock then asked our attorney to divulge private attorney/client information, and our attorney replied appropriately.
QR, increasingly the primary attack medium of the Austin left, manufactures news versus reporting actual events, and in true form, now features a headline about so-called “end-of-life” talks stalling because Texas Right to Life won’t come to some table.
First, the talks hadn’t begun so there was no stall among these bedfellows. Second, not everyone victimized by the current statutory ten-day process is at the end of their lives, so the terms are quite misleading—the patient only nears the end of his life once the physician or facility unilaterally withdraw and/or withhold treatment. The more appropriate terms for this debate are “medical ethics,” “patients’ rights,” “futile care policies,” “death panels,” etc. Third and most important, those who actually help patients navigate this web of hospital imperialism and the statutory transfer process under current law have been working together again for over a year.
Our inclination is to abide by Matthew 7:6 and stay on the course with those who demonstrate good faith. Our sense of urgency to show our cards to those who derail our legislative efforts to do the bidding of the establishment and Big Medicine is equal to that of our desire to attend Planned Parenthood’s rally day to find common ground.
Any good faith has now dissipated. Some of the invitees appear more concerned with perpetuating a media/public relations and political disinformation battle versus the compelling issue of Pro-Life protections for the vulnerable who are born, which we mistakenly thought was the focus of the invitation.