Essential Estrogen

If your loved one was terminally ill, who would you want making the decision of when (and if) life-saving measures are discontinued? Most of us, I believe, would want our loved one to make such decisions for his or herself. If that loved one could not make such decisions; however, who should?

Tomorrow in Texas, a mother will head into court in a final attempt to keep her terminally ill 17-month-old son on life support. If a judge refuses to hear her case and/or rules against her, hospital staff will remove his ventilator.

A 1999 Texas law signed by then Governor George W. Bush allows a hospital to make decisions in "medically futile" cases. Just over two years ago, the law faced its first battle and it withstood, allowing a Houston hospital to end the life of an infant boy, Sun Hudson, against his mother's wishes.

One of the co-drafters of the law as well as the 2003 expansion (to include decisions against the wishes of parents of minors) was the National Right to Life Committee. According to one of the attorneys who co-drafted this legislation, witnesses who testified in support of the bill included representatives of NRL, Texas Right To Life and the Hemlock Society.

Although I fail to find enough humor in the turn of events to label them as ironic, Texas Right to Life and other primarily pro-life groups are working against the law they once supported. Matter-of-fact, according to the BBC, Texas Right to Life has been involved in more than 24 such cases in the last 18 months.

If there was ever a case to be made for government staying out of people's private lives, especially in the realm of healthcare decisions, this is it. Our government should never be allowed to force a family to flip the switch or not to flip the switch. I would also go as far as to say the government has absolutely no business making an inquiry as to the existence of a switch.

In 1995 I was pregnant with my second child when the world, at least as I knew it to be, ended. My child, a son, was terminally ill. Due to several severe neural tube defects including anencephally, there was no chance of survival. My initial response was to call the doctor a liar and run from doctor to doctor in search of a different diagnosis. Surely all of this could be fixed if I could just find the right doctor, right?

There are some things which cannot be fixed and, I soon learned, this was one of them. A few short weeks after learning my child would die due to his conditions, insult was added to injury. Not only would my child die, it was suspected he'd never make it to term. This was due to both his existing defects and an over-abundance of amniotic fluid.

After everything was discussed and all the possible outcomes weighed, my husband and I decided to end the pregnancy. If our son was to die pre-term, it was likely my body would not automatically move into labor and there were significant risks to both our reproductive future and my health. We already understood we would live without this child. Could we justify the risk of our then two-year-old daughter living without her mother?

Once our family made its decision, I expected the process to move quickly. That was not the case and -- due to many events I will not detail here -- it was several weeks later before I walked into a doctor's office to begin the process of turning off life support. What I didn't know at that moment was that our son had died and infection had already begun. (As a side note, those of you who have argued that D and X procedures (aka the non-medical term of partial birth abortion) for medical reasons are non-existent because you've never known a woman who had one. Well, I've just ruined future use of that statistic for you.)

Four years prior to our son's death, I sat in a hospital and watched my mother in her final few hours of life. Knowing she had fought a difficult battle with cancer and that she did not want any medical intervention when her body began to shut down, our family agreed to let her go.

Turning off of life support (whether that life support is a mechanical ventilator or a woman's womb) is something which should never be regulated by government. The choice belongs with the family.

My prayers will be with the mother as she goes before a judge tomorrow. Her son - just like all of us - is going to die. Her family - just like all of our families - doesn't need the government adding insult to injury.