Prolife Blogs tells the story:

A life or death struggle is taking place at St. Luke’s Hospital, where doctors are planning to remove a woman from life support.

The patient is not brain dead, and according to her family, she wants to live.

Andrea Clark has been at St. Luke’s since November.
They may be small in number, but the protesters said the bigger picture is the gravity of their message.

“They just say, ‘well she’s miserable.’ Well, to me that’s a quality of life decision that is up to her and her family,” Lanore Dixon said. “That is not a medical decision.”

By the way, before you get going in the wrong direction, note that St. Luke’s is an Episcopal hospital.

Thanks to Amy Pawlak for sending it along.

Wesley Smith comments

Texas has a terrible law that permits an unelected, self-appointed, anonymous ethics committee to forcibly remove care. Once that happens, the patient has 10 days to find another hospital. These are closed proceedings. I am unaware of any records kept of the evidence presented at the hearings or the deliberations.

These are life and death decisions and it seems to me that there may be a significant constitutional issue here of immense importance. A law permits private decision-making that will result in death without even the right to a public hearing, to cross examine witnesses, or a formal appeal. Someday, someone is going to attack this statute and its constitutional implementation frontally in federal court. I have already urged some attorneys in private that they do just that. Let us hope that fairness and simple justice prevail.

That Texas law? Signed by then-governor Bush in 1999.

Andrea’s sisters are racing to beat the clock but say the hospital is working against them. Although the obscure 1999 Futile Care Law that gave hospitals the authority to remove patients from life support despite the patient’s and family wishes says once such a decision is made that the hospital must provide the patient’s family with a list of hospitals where the patient could be transferred, St. Luke’s hasn’t done that. The sisters also claim that the hospital social worker exaggerated the seriousness of Andrea’s condition, exaggerating the level of care that is needed in an alleged attempt to discourage other hospitals from admitting her as a patient.

At a guest reader at the Houston Chronicle site, this post just appeared:

Saturday the family protested in front of St. Lukes. Lanore told me that several families joined them who had previously been urged to discontinue life support for a loved one and did and were sorry that they were talked into it. They wanted the sisters to fight this.

Andrea is sedated now with pain medication, but when she is not she communicates well to her sister. Lanore said the last time Andrea was awake Lanore read her lips and Andrea said, "I miss you."

I asked Lanore why she thinks the Doctors decided that Andrea should be taken off life support. She said "You know Andrea has many friends and is part of about a dozen online crochet groups. She loves crafts. But to someone who downhill skis I suppose that doesn’t look too exciting. I think the Doctors think her life sucks."