Hospital can't pull plug on patient rights

In accordance with Texas' 10-Day Rule, if a hospital does not deem it feasible to continue treating a patient, then the family is given 10 days to find another facility before the hospital pulls the plug. That was the case for Baby Tinslee Lewis in Fort Worth, Texas, whose mother received such an order when Tinslee was nine months old.

Texas Right to Life's Kimberlynn Schwartz tells One News Now the lower courts have ruled in the girl's favor.

"Cook Children's Medical Center had appealed this decision, taking their case all the way to the Supreme Court, asking the court for permission to pull the plug on an almost two-year-old girl," Schwartz relays. "The Supreme Court said, No, we're not going to allow you right now to pull the plug on this baby girl."

That means the rulings from the lower courts, including an appeals court, will stand.

"It signals that the statute violates patients' civil rights and that the state of Texas should not allow the statute to be used to attack patients' rights again," the pro-lifer asserts.

Texas Right to Life sees this as something the Texas Legislature can work on in the current session. The topic has been dealt with in at least two previous sessions without success in making the law fit within the framework of the U.S. and state constitutions.