special update
ANDREA CLARK: In Friday’s issue of Communique, it was reported that Andrea Clark, a disabled woman being cared for at a Houston hospital, was scheduled to be removed from all care because of a Texas law that allows a hospital ethics committee to choose death for a patient. Andrea’s family thought they had found another medical facility that would continue providing care, but late Friday those plans fell through.
This is a time-critical situation. The family’s attorney is now demanding that the Houston hospital continue to provide life-sustaining care while efforts to relocate Andrea to another facility continue.
(Reading: “Relocation of heart patient on life support called off,” Houston Chronicle, 4/29/06; “St. Luke’s receives cease and desist letter from family,” Lone Star Times, 5/1/06)
COMMENTARY: Mark Pickup of Human Life Matters, a Canadian activist for the disabled, offered his thoughts on the Clark case:
The critical issue now is to try to find another hospital facility to accept Andrea. Ideally the facility would be in Houston where her family is. Failing that, somewhere in Texas. Failing that, a facility anywhere in the United States. Failing that, Human Life Matters will try to set something up with a volunteer medical team here in Canada to care for her.
St. Luke’s Episcopalian Hospital notified the family of Andrea they were going to turn off the respirator Sunday [April 30]. The hospital has since backed off until Tuesday when their ethics committee will meet to decide her fate. Under a Texas futile care law passed in 1999, hospitals can decide to stop treatment of patients if they deem futile. Broad interpretation of futility makes this treacherous. St. Luke’s did not decide to stop treatment of Andrea because the treatment was not working but because it WAS working. They apparently deemed her life not worth living.
Please have people contact their state right to life offices to try and find a hospital with pro-life doctors in their area committed to Hippocratic medicine and willing to take Andrea (on volunteer basis if necessary). In 2003, Human Life Matters was able to assemble a full contingent of Christian medical professionals and a donated nursing home bed at a Good Samaritan Hospital in Edmonton, Alberta, willing to treat Terri Schiavo on a volunteer basis. (Sadly, we could not get her into Canada for sanctuary against her husband and hostile courts in Florida.) Surely a similar humanitarian arrangement can be mounted (ideally in Houston) close to her family — if no facility will agree to accept her. If this is not possible, what about another state without a futile care law?
It is time for Christians with the medical and community skills (be they evangelical or Catholic Christians) to step up to the plate and show St. Luke’s Episcopalian Hospital what real Christian witness looks like in care for the “least of these.”
Things may grow progressively more desperate as Tuesday draws near, if St. Luke’s does not do what St. Luke the physician would want: follow the love for one another that Christ calls us to.
(Background: “Hospital to ‘kill’ sick woman?” World Net Daily 4/25/06; “Death by ethics committee,” National Review, 4/27/06)
ACTION: Please register your concern for Andrea by contacting St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital by “>e-mail, or call 832-355-1000 and ask for media relations.