There are some strange happenings in the pro-life world this session.
First, Texas Alliance for Life (TAL) strangely withheld support for a fetal pain bill being promoted by Texas Right to Life’s (TxRTL), something that seemed a no-brainer for them.
Now this.
Texas Right to Life (TxRTL) is going one step further regarding TAL’s end-of-life-care bill. Right to Life is not just withholding support, they are expressly opposing to the bill. This is strange.
Pro-life groups don’t get involved in very many bills in a given session. As a general guideline, they support bills that protect life and oppose bills that endanger life.
Sometimes pro-life groups differ about whether to get involved with a bill. But for one pro-life group to judge a bill pro-life enough to push, while the other groups judges it anti-life enough to oppose, is strange.
It is definitely worth examining.
The letter published on the TxRTL website explains the opposition to TAL’s bill.
The letter says up front that, “Current Texas state law allows for doctors and hospitals to withdraw life-sustaining treatment from any patient for any reason after providing ten days notice despite an advance directive, a surrogate’s decision, or a patient’s expressed wishes.”
So, the letter published by TxRTL concedes that there are currently no limitations on withdrawal of life-sustaining support by doctors and hospitals.
Then the letter goes on to use some fairly tortured logic to conclude that the limitations TAL’s bill puts on “pulling the plug” are somehow worse than the current situation in which there are no limitations.
This is a pretty odd claim on its face. After all, incrementalism is one of the first lessons in the Legislative Strategy 101 textbook. Even if you think a thing is very wrong, getting the law to admit it is a little wrong is a moral victory, at least.
On incrementalism, think of anti-marriage liberals, some of whom are now admitting their ultimate goal is to eradicate the institution of marriage. First, they slackened divorce laws, removing much of the weight from the decision to get married or divorced. This cheapened our view of marriage.
Then, they were for civil unions, now gay marriage, and soon polygamous marriage. If you think not, read Jillian Keenan’s article at Slate magazine, seriously advocating for polygamous marriage just this week.
But back to Texas. What is the claim being made against doctors having to follow criteria designed to limit their discretion to “pull the plug”? Basically, the letter published by TxRTL seems to give two arguments.
The first it is that the limitations on pulling the plug created by the bill aren’t effective.
Again, what happened to incrementalism? This bill would, at worst, be a botched attempt to limit something bad. Pro-life legislators and groups can always come back next session and talk about how the first attempt at a good deed failed, and roll out version 2.0.
The second argument against TAL’s bill comes later. It is confusing at best, and, at worst it is disingenuous.
The letter says, “SB303 puts power – power unspecified under current law – into the hands of a facility, leaving no real recourse or say to the patient whose life is at stake.”
“Unspecified” is the weasel word in this sentence. It suggests “specifying” powers is somehow a bad thing here. True, the new law specifies a doctors right to pull the plug, but it does so in an attempt to limit what TxRTL’s own website says is currently unlimited discretion to pull the plug.
It’s not like you can only legally do things that are “specified” by the law – as if “specifying” a doctor’s right to pull the plug creates that right. In fact, it’s closer to the opposite.
For example, there is no law that says Texans can eat cereal for breakfast. Our right to eat cereal for breakfast is a broad, unspecified power that we have, just like doctors currently have a broad, unspecified right to pull the plug.
Our right to eat cereal for breakfast would only become legally “specified” if it were being limited. Suddenly we would have a list of what kinds of cereal we could eat for breakfast and which ones we could not.
Specifying a doctor’s right to pull the plug is about limiting that right, not creating it.
Later, the letter complains that SB303 doesn’t extend by enough days the hospital transfer time in a disputed case of care removal. It extends it, but not enough? And this makes it a threat to the dignity of life, not just a bill to sit on the sidelines for? Strange.
Both of the big pro-life advocacy groups have done many good things for the protection of life in Texas, and will likely do much more. We have one of the most successful pro-life lobbies in the country. By all accounts, the drama this session is not normal course – at least not this level of drama.
Many good people rely on the genuineness of these groups.
In the end, these groups have taken on duties to the unborn, the disabled, the elderly, and to God. Here’s to hoping competition doesn’t interfere with these noble duties.
– letter against SB303 published by Tx Right to Life
–Slate magazine legalize-polygamy propaganda