July 2020

In this month’s newsletter we explore the inhumanity of denying life-sustaining treatment and basic care to those who need it.

In the couple of years preceding my mom’s death at age 87, I accompanied her on many visits to doctors. Whether she was visiting her primary care doctor or a specialist, the experience was always the same. When I brought up new symptoms that mom had been exhibiting or shared my observations, I heard one of two responses – “Your mom has lived a good, long life and you need to let her go” or “The symptoms your mom is exhibiting are normal for someone of her age.” I am not talking about minor aches and pains. In Mom’s last 18 months of life, she experienced significant heart arrhythmia, fainting spells, memory loss, and balance issues. No doctor seemed interested in treating her or in identifying the root causes of her health problems. It became apparent that they simply wanted to send her home to die because she was old.

After watching what happened to my mom, I am deeply passionate that no one should be denied basic medical care. Last week, I had cause to remember this when I interviewed Mary Kellett, Executive Director of Prenatal Partners for Life. Mary’s son Peter was born with a condition called Trisomy 18. The doctors did not comprehend his value, but the incredible love Peter gave and received taught his family much about life. Listen to Mary as she describes the joy Peter brought to everyone around him, and the tragedy that ensued from a medical culture that did not value him. This is the heart-warming and heart-breaking account of a six-and-a-half-year life well lived, and a legacy that lives on.

Mary explained during our discussion that it is not uncommon for hospitals or even clinics to have a medical futility policy. Medical futility policies are based on the premise that life-sustaining treatment can be withheld or withdrawn, against patients’ or families’ wishes, based on arbitrary “quality of life” and/or “cost-benefit” judgments. In many cases, it is the patient’s life that is deemed futile (i.e., useless)—not the treatment. For additional information on medical futility policies, read HALO’s “Medical Futility—What Does It Mean?” fact sheet.

Another example of medical futility is a Texas statute known as “the 10-day law.” According to this law, a hospital committee can decide to withdraw treatment, for any reason, including the subjective assessment of “quality of life.” The hospital can remove treatment, even life-sustaining treatment (ventilator, dialysis, oxygen, antibiotics, etc.) against a patient’s/family’s wishes and they are not allowed to appeal the decision. For more information about this unconscionable law, please see Texas Right to Life’s recent virtual conference where Emily Cook, General Counsel, discusses the ramifications of this law and describes specific cases in which she and others have intervened to save lives.

Without a major change in medical training, attitudes, and laws, more and more of us will be at risk when we seek care. Therefore, it is vitally important that all of us learn how to be advocates for ourselves and others. As Dr. Howard Koh, formerly the assistant secretary for health at the US Department of Health and Human Services, has stated, “Advocacy is the engine for change, and the beauty of it is that it can begin with just one person.”

June 2020

My husband and I adopted our first child, Tommy, from Guatemala in 2005. The process took two long years to complete. As we prepared to bring Tommy home to Minnesota, we knew we needed to get a family will and trust in place to ensure that, if anything happened to us, our children would be provided for.

Providentially, my husband had signed up for a group legal plan through his employer. This benefit provided a network of attorneys to write a will and trust for us. We selected an attorney and met with him. He outlined the will preparation process and asked us a series of questions. We were prepared for the first questions, including “Who do you want to care for your children if you should both pass away?” However, as we moved along, the questions got progressively more challenging. For example:

• Who do you want to designate to make medical decisions on your behalf when you are unable to make them?
• What kinds of medical treatment do you want to receive?
• Should you be kept alive on a ventilator or with a tube that feeds you or provides fluids to you artificially? If so, under what circumstances would you want to receive those?
• If your breathing stops or your heart stops beating, do you want to be resuscitated? If so, under what circumstances?

When we had set the appointment, our goal was to answer all questions definitively so we could return in another week or so and sign our will and trust document. Nevertheless, when the attorney asked us to state our medical preferences for possible future circumstances, my husband and I blankly looked at each other. It quickly became apparent that we needed time to do some research. Being passionately pro-life, I wanted to make life-affirming elections. Unfortunately, I just wasn’t certain what constituted life-affirming healthcare. Thankfully, we took the time to do further research before answering these crucially important questions.

Why I am writing about this now? Well, recently, a HALO board member reminded me that, if you have a do-not-resuscitate (DNR) order on file, it will make you ineligible for a respirator to treat COVID-19 and other illnesses. If my husband and I hadn’t done our research back in 2005, we each would have opted to have a DNR on file – and our DNR’s would still be on file today. Those DNR’s would make us ineligible for a ventilator should we be diagnosed with COVID-19 and need to be placed on one.

What’s right? What’s wrong? How do I decide?
HALO’s fact sheet called “Life-Affirming Principles for Medical Decision-Making” explains seven basic principles that will help you make life-affirming, medically appropriate, sensible, and informed health care decisions. This fact sheet is an easy to use tool designed to help you formulate and discuss your values and wishes. Click here.

Do YOU want to Make a Difference?! Does your Church have a Respect Life Committee? If so, please send copies of HALO’s publication, MAKING A DIFFERENCE, A Guide for Defending the Medically Vulnerable, to your Respect Life Committee members. Or, you could share information about HALO with the Respect Life Committee and let them know how to contact us: 1-888-221-HALO www.halovoice.org HALO 7301 Bass Lake Road Minneapolis, MN 55428. Together we can change hearts and minds.

I have been inspired by the “We are the Pro-life Generation” signs and t-shirts that I have seen at the March for Life and other pro-life events. To me, these signs, t-shirts and the chants that go with them are symbols of hope for an abortion-free future.

One afternoon last week, however, I had cause to wonder exactly how pro-life is the pro-life generation? I was working at my kitchen table when my fourteen-year old son, who is passionately pro-life on abortion, came in from school and asked me what I was working on. I responded that I was trying to come up with an idea for a printed advertisement for an upcoming event – focusing the ad on either organ donation or physician-assisted suicide.

This led to a discussion on organ donation. I explained that, in order to transplant a human heart, the transplant surgeon must take it from a living person. He responded, “So?” Thinking that he didn’t fully understand what I’d just said, I explained further, “You would have to first kill the donor before you could take the heart.” My son responded, “I don’t know that is a bad thing. Maybe someone younger would need the heart.” Then I made it personal. I asked him if it would have been okay when Grandma was sick to take her heart and give it to someone younger. Recognizing the surgeon would have needed to kill her to make that happen, my son immediately understood what I was saying. He just hadn’t thought about it that way before.

We also discussed physician-assisted suicide. He wasn’t certain he understood how physician-assisted suicide worked. I explained that typically the patient’s doctor would send the patient home with a lethal dose of pills that they would take in their home to end their life. He responded, “Maybe that’s okay if the patient is suffering a lot.” This led us to consider whether it’s okay to play God – for humans, as opposed to God, to choose to end someone’s life. I asked him if it would be okay to send someone who was “suffering a lot” home with a gun or revolver so they could take their own life. He adamantly said “No, that would not be okay.” I asked him why that was different than giving a person drugs to commit suicide. He couldn’t really articulate why.

My point in telling this story is not to embarrass my son (who would surely be embarrassed that I am writing about him) but to illustrate that we need to make sure we are educating our young people on the value of all human beings. If we want everyone to know that every human being’s life is a precious gift, we need to start with our children.

In closing, I couldn’t agree more with Mary Kizior from the American Life League, who says, “We must educate the next generation, not only on the facts of pro-life issues, but on how to live and act in a pro-life manner. Pro-life education is key to transforming hearts and minds. It is education that forms the moral consciences of our young people—the future of the pro-life movement.”