Texas Patriots,

Legislation to repeal the Ten-Day Rule, a platform plank of the RPT, has been placed on the Senate Intent Calendar and is eligible to be heard on the Senate floor.

The Republican Party of Texas supports Senate Bill 917 by Senator Bryan Hughes as legislation that seeks to carry out the intention of the Republican Platform:

Plank 277. Repeal and Replace Ten-Day Rule: We support legislation repealing the unethical Ten-Day Rule in Section 166.046, Health and Safety Code, which allows physicians to withdraw basic life-sustaining treatment (like a ventilator) after an impending countdown. We also support legislation replacing the Ten-Day Rule with a truly life-affirming law that requires a patient’s or surrogate’s medical decision about basic life-sustaining treatment to be honored until the patient is transferred to another physician or facility that will honor the decision to continue life-sustaining treatment.

Last year at the Republican Party of Texas State Convention the Legislative Priorities Committee discussed the numerous resolutions they received from around the state asking to make repealing the 10-Day Rule a priority. After hearing many witnesses and committee members support the effort, the Legislative Priorities Committee placed the issue in their top 15.

Currently, the Texas Advance Directives Act (TADA) allows a doctor and hospital to withdraw life-sustaining medical treatment, like a ventilator or dialysis, from a patient against the

instructions of the patient’s family, the patient’s expressed medical decisions, and even the patient’s written advance directive.

Once the doctor’s decision is affirmed by the hospital’s own ethics committee, the patient is given only ten days to transfer to another facility or physician willing to honor their instructions before treatment may be legally withdrawn. This nearly always means the patient’s death.

SB 917 as filed would have repealed the Ten-Day Rule altogether by removing the countdown and requiring that the patient continue to receive treatment until a transfer can be found. A substituted version increasing the countdown from 10 to 90 days passed out of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee last week.

Please call your Senator and ask him/her to vote in favor of SB 917 by Senator Hughes.

This legislation is critical to the RPT platform goal of valuing the right to life and due process of law. Until the Ten-Day Rule is repealed and replaced, every Texan is at risk.

For God and Texas,

-- The Republican Party of Texas

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