Bush* has selective compassion for Americans.

Q: Who signed a Texas law allowing hospitals to cut life support over a family's objections?

A: GWB.

Why does the media not discuss this Hypocrisy. Is this supposed to be a state secret or is it just more of our RW GOP controlled media?

In 1999 then governor Bush signed a law which allowed hospitals to withdraw life support from patients, over the objections of the family, if they consider the treatment to be nonbeneficial.

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/3073295

Hospitals can end life support
Decision hinges on patient's ability to pay, prognosis
By LEIGH HOPPER
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

Bill Olive / Chronicle
(L-r)Mario Caballero, Spiro Nikolouzos Jr. and Jannette Nikolouzos. St. Luke's notified Jannette Nikolouzos in a March 1 letter that it would withdraw life-sustaining care of her husband of 34 years, Spiro Nikolouzos, in 10 days.

A patient's inability to pay for medical care combined with a prognosis that renders further care futile are two reasons a hospital might suggest cutting off life support, the chief medical officer at St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital said Monday.

Dr. David Pate's comments came as the family of Spiro Nikolouzos fights to keep St. Luke's from turning off the ventilator and artificial feedings keeping the 68-year-old grandfather alive.

St. Luke's notified Jannette Nikolouzos in a March 1 letter that it would withdraw life-sustaining care of her husband of 34 years in 10 days, which would be Friday. Mario Caba-llero, the attorney representing the family, said he is seeking a two-week extension, at minimum, to give the man more time to improve and to give his family more time to find an alternative facility.
<snip>
Law allows removal
State law allows doctors to remove patients from life support if the hospital's ethics committee agrees, but it requires that the hospital give families 10 days to find another facility.

A similar case is still in the courts. Texas Children's Hospital wants to discontinue life support on 5-month-old Sun Hudson, who was diagnosed shortly after birth with a fatal form of dwarfism. His mother, Wanda Hudson, wants her son's care to continue at the hospital.

On Wednesday, a judge will consider whether Harris County Probate Court judge William McCulloch may remain on the Hudson case. Caballero, who represents Wanda Hudson, filed a motion that McCulloch remove himself from the case after making what Caballero said were biased statements.

March 10, 2005, 10:49PM

Right to Life backed law that irks wife
By RICK CASEY
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

Judge Tony Lindsay expressed "most sincere sadness and apologies," but said the law required Nikolouzos show a reasonable expectation of finding an alternative facility before Lindsay could order the hospital to continue treatment it did not feel was advisable.

It's the same law under which another judge denied Wanda Hudson's request to force Texas Children's Hospital to maintain Sun Hudson on life support.

The law was passed in 1999 and amended two years ago. Acting as a negotiator for Houston-based Texas Right to Life, Burke Balch flew in from Washington "20 to 25 times" to sit at a table with represent-
atives of the Texas Hospital Association and other parties to negotiate the law and its amendment.

Balch is director of National Right to Life's Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics.

Right to Life was at the table partly because then-Gov. George W. Bush had vetoed a similar bill two years earlier (1997) at the request of some members of the religious right, according to its sponsor, then-Sen. Mike Moncrief, now mayor of Fort Worth.<snip>

After new negotiations, the bill went before a Senate committee without opposition. Balch testified in favor, as did representatives of the Baylor Health Care System and the Texas Conference of Catholic Health Facilities.<snip>

Two years later, his group won an Internet registry of doctors and institutions willing to consider accepting patients under the bill in order to make it easier to find them.

"Before this bill there was no legal requirement to provide treatment in these circumstances at all, so we found it an advance to provide this opportunity of a transfer," Balch said.

Before the bill, however, judges had little guidance from the law when families went to court to challenge the decision of hospitals, or of some family members pitted against others. Boston College ethics professor John Paris, a leading medical ethicist, said judges were extremely reluctant to allow life support to be removed.<snip>