Where Governor Perry Stands on Involuntary Euthanasia
We will be updating this information frequently as more information becomes available. At this time, we've not sent out our questionnaires for lawmakers. For now, you can view the letter we received from Governor Perry's office when we made a plea for his help in saving our sister, Andrea Clark from being removed from life support by St. Luke's Hospital in Houston, Texas.
From the answer we received in this letter, we can only conclude that the Governor (or his staff) does not understand how the Advance Directives Act works in reality. First of all, having a written Advance Directive does not protect a patient from being euthanized. Second, rather than the law establishing "a means by which a patient's medical representative can seek a transfer to a medical facility that will provide treatment," the law actually prevents patients with complex medical conditions from being accepted as patients at other medical facilities. Third, the law doesn't establish a means of transfer that didn't already exist as a right of all citizens. Finally, the ten day dead line practically assures patients will be euthanized. It's hard enough to find a new doctor when the patient is healthy--it's almost impossible when the patient is critically ill.
We'll soon be mailing out questionnaire's to Governor Perry to give him another shot at this. We hope he (or his staff) learns enough about the law to avoid the kind of embarrassment this response should have caused. We'lll post responses to our questionnaire when it becomes available.
Here is Governor Perry's response to our plea to him to help us save Andrea:
