Texas judge rules hospital can remove 11-month-old Tinslee Lewis from life support despite protest from her distraught family

The law stipulates that if the hospital's ethics committee agrees with doctors, treatment can be withdrawn after 10 days if a new provider can't be found to take the patient.  

Hospital officials have said they reached out to more than 20 facilities to see if one would take Tinslee, but all agreed that further care is futile. Groups including Texas Right to Life have also been trying to find a facility to take her. 

In a hearing last month Trinity Lewis said she believed her daughter would continue to fight for her life. 

She described her daughter as 'sassy' and says she has a sense of the girl's likes and dislikes.  Tinslee enjoys the animated musical Trolls and cries when it ends, the mother said. She added that Tinslee doesn't like to have her hair brushed. 

'I want to be the one to make the decision for her,' Lewis said about removing her daughter from life support.

At the hearing last month, Dr. Jay Duncan, one of Tinslee's physicians, described the girl's complex conditions and Cook Children's efforts to treat her, which have included about seven surgeries and three open heart operations. 

The cardiac intensive care doctor said that for the first five months of Tinslee's life doctors had hope she might one day at least be able to go home. But Duncan said there came a point when doctors determined they had run out of surgical and clinical options, and that treatment was no longer benefiting Tinslee. 

Duncan said last month that the girl would likely die within half a year, and noted the hospital has made 'extraordinary' efforts to find another facility for her.

'She is in pain. Changing a diaper causes pain. Suctioning her breathing tube causes pain. Being on the ventilator causes pain,' Dr. Jay Duncan, one of Tinslee's physicians at Cook Children's hospital in Fort Worth (above), said at a hearing last month

'She is in pain. Changing a diaper causes pain. Suctioning her breathing tube causes pain. Being on the ventilator causes pain,' he said.

Duncan said there had been 'many, many' conversations with Tinslee's family about her dire condition.

'We care a lot about Tinslee,' Duncan said. 'We care a lot about her family.'

Tarrant County Juvenile Court Judge Alex Kim issued a temporary restraining order to stop the removal of life support on November 10. But Kim was removed from the case after the hospital filed a motion questioning his impartiality and saying he had bypassed case-assignment rules to designate himself as the presiding judge.

After his removal, Judge Marion, who is chief justice of Texas' Fourth Court of Appeals, was assigned to hear the request for an injunction in Tarrant County district court.

Cook Children's said hospital officials had been talking to Tinslee's family for months about concerns for her long-term survival. By August, the hospital said, everyone on the girl's care team agreed that further care was futile and by September they had begun talking to the family about withdrawing life support. 

With the doctors and her family still unable to resolve their differences, the ethics committee met October 30 and unanimously decided further treatment was inappropriate