From the Dallas Morning News, a series about a Texas couple who found out prenatally that their son had Trisomy 13. With the help of a pediatric hospice nurse and a supportive community, T.K. and Deidrea Laux experienced the birth and short life of their son, Thomas.

They shared their story in hopes of helping other families facing infant loss, as well as to encourage wider support for perinatal and pediatric hospice services.

Part 1: Expecting Thomas

Part 2: ‘Look at him, he’s beautiful’

Video: Choosing Thomas

How we reported this series

Editorial: Better because of Thomas. An excerpt:

The Lauxes lived through what writer Sheldon Vanauken calls “a severe mercy” – a torturous experience that, because of the way they and those who love them responded to it, revealed a deeper truth – and reason to hope. Hope is not optimism; hope is the conviction that come what may, our suffering is not in vain. The Lauxes have shown us all how to suffer in love and through the power of love, and that immeasurable good can come from crisis if we are brave enough to let it.

Said Deidrea: “We are better because Thomas existed.” We all are. The work of love was gloriously displayed in that little boy’s brief life, and the darkness of pain and death did not overcome it.

From the Los Angeles Times:

The decision was an apparent acknowledgement by Democrats that the proposal had become a lightning rod for critics of the proposed overhaul of the health care system.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin had charged that the President wanted to set up “death panels” that would deny health care services to people like her parents and her son with Down syndrome.

Supporters of the plan said the provision was intended to pay doctors who counsel patients about end-of-life care.

The Palin claim about “death panels” was so widely discredited that the White House has begun openly quoting it in an effort to show that opponents of the healthcare overhaul are misinformed.

Palin has defended her claim with a new posting.

Writing in the Huffington Post, Lennard Davis says Republican concerns about “death panels” amount to “misinformation and downright lies” that use people with disabilities as “poster children” in an attempt to sink the administration’s health care proposal. An excerpt:

This rhetorical concern for the disabled is fascinating coming from the right, which has routinely worked against extending accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act, saying that it would cost businesses too much to retrofit their environments.

… It is important that people with disabilities speak out against being used as the negative poster children of the Republican’s smear campaign. The reforms advocated in the health care bill would specifically benefit people with disabilities by stopping the current practice in which insurance companies can terminate people for their health status.

Davis is a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Laura Hershey, writing in U.S. News & World Report, says the current debate over “end-of-life care” neglects to acknowledge the rich, vibrant lives lived by people with disabilities. She worries that health care rationing plans rely on discriminatory and erroneous views that ignore the experiences and value of people with disabilities.

An excerpt:

Tactless acquaintances have told me they would kill themselves if they became as disabled as me. More chillingly, the last time I was hospitalized for pneumonia, I had two different nurses ask if I had a DNR-a “do not resuscitate” order. I replied that I had come to the hospital to get better, not to die.

Unfortunately, that expectation of medical treatment can run up against physicians’ opposing views and hospitals’ rules.

… In this economic and social climate, we fear that medical practitioners will stop short of saving our lives. More and more, despite rhetoric about “patient autonomy,” the decision to withhold treatment is imposed upon patients. Especially vulnerable are those unable to communicate their wishes.

From Jake Tapper on ABC’s ‘Political Punch’ blog, AP:

A statement posted on Sarah Palin’s Facebook page today labeled the administration’s health care plan as “evil,” and said it is designed to save money by withholding care from people with chronic illnesses and disabilities. An excerpt from the post, titled “Statement on the Current Health Care Debate”:

… who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

Tapper calls the claim “pants-on-fire untrue,” and offers refutations from Factcheck.org and Politifact.com.

Palin’s spokeswoman did not immediately confirm her authorship of the statement.

Earlier posts start here.

See also:

• Shameless scaremongering on euthanasia issue — By Jay Bookman, Atlanta Journal-Constitution
• Time to go, grampa — By Pat Buchanan, Townhall.com

From the Washington Post:

A campaign on conservative talk radio, fueled by President Obama’s calls to control exorbitant medical bills, has sparked fear among senior citizens that the health-care bill moving through Congress will lead to end-of-life “rationing” and even “euthanasia.”

The controversy stems from a proposal to pay physicians who counsel elderly or terminally ill patients about what medical interventions they would prefer near the end of life and how to prepare instructions such as living wills.

… on right-leaning radio programs, religious e-mail lists and Internet blogs, the proposal has been described as “guiding you in how to die,” “an ORDER from the Government to end your life,” promoting “death care” and, in the words of antiabortion leader Randall Terry, an attempt to “kill Granny.”

Defenders of the legislation, including lawmakers, the American Medical Association and the AARP respond that the accusations are untrue, offensive, and even cruel.

Earlier posts start here.

Rebecca Reisner, writing in Business Week, says an obscure end-of-life provision in the administration’s health care proposal is stoking passions in the “conservative blogosphere,” with claims that it is a step toward government-mandated euthanasia.

During an AARP-sponsored town hall meeting earlier this week, a woman told the President: “I have been told there is a clause in there that everyone that’s Medicare age will be visited and told to decide how they wish to die. This bothers me greatly, and I’d like for you to promise me that this is not in this bill.” Obama replied that the intent of the provision was to promote advance planning and living wills.

Advocates of the measure say critics have misinterpreted the provision, while opponents are contending that their criticism of it has been misunderstood. An AARP spokesman criticized “baseless scare tactics put out by those who seek to derail health-care reform.”

See also:

False euthanasia claims: The claim that the House health bill pushes suicide is nonsense — Factcheck.org

Earlier posts here, here and here.