Court documents were released today in the Haleigh Poutre case that show the Department of Social Services, the state agency responsible for her care, waited eight days after she was first diagnosed with very, very severe injuries, before seeking permission from judicial authorities to discontinue her life support.  Is that too fast?  Did they not give her a chance to recover?

    I think the best way to answer this question is to ask what a competent parent might have done in similar circumstances.  My sense is that most parents would probably not discontinue life support after eight days.  I would bet that most would wait longer, to see if there would be any change at all.  If DSS really meant to discontinue care after eight days, that is probably moving too quickly.

    But we have to pause here and avoid the hysteria that surrounds this case.  We have to keep in mind that DSS had to guard against possible legal action from Haleigh’s step-father, who bears some responsibility for her terrible injuries.  They had gained "temporary custody" of Haleigh two days after her hospitalization.  That sounds like an uncertain status to me.  Might the step-father have regained custody, or could he have claimed some rights to manage her care?  If so, then the state faced the possibility of Haleigh being under the control of a man who beat her or, at best, did not intervene to stop the beatings her step-mother administered.  And he has a vested interest in keeping her alive, however artificially.  The state had to move quickly to put itself in a position to make decisions about Haleigh.

     So, it may have been right for the state to gain legal authority to make end-of-life decisions for Haleigh; but it would have been wrong had they exercised that authority after only eight days. 

    As it turned out, we will never know what might have happened, because what did happened was a legal challenge from the step-father that carried the case forward for another month.  And that month seems to have brought some improvement to Haleigh’s condition.  Let’s keep this in mind: the DSS did not pull the plug on Haleigh.  Rather, they moved to gain the authority to make that decision with medical advice:

Social services spokeswoman Denise Monteiro said the agency sought
approval to remove Haleigh’s feeding tube and ventilator so they could
have "options" in handling her case.

"Just because you get permission to remove life support doesn’t mean you’re going to do it," she said.

       As terrible as it sounds, Haleigh could have gotten worse (more strokes; heart failure; etc.) and, under such circumstances, the respirator may have had to be stopped.  Although the term "options" may be taken by some to be heartless, the state needed to be able to act if conditions warranted it, just as a parent would be able to act in other cases.

     So, I am not yet willing to join the anti-DSS bandwagon on this.  Yes, they should have done better in preventing the abuse that lead to her near-death.  Yes, they should not have discontinued life support after only eight days.  But let’s remember: they did not discontinue life support and Haleigh has taken an unexpected turn for the better (though we cannot know what "better" means here).  Again, if a parent were faced with this situation after one month or two months, would they decide to discontinue care?  Perhaps.  We do not want to create hard and fast rules that will get in the way of that very difficult and very personal decision.  Should we encourage DSS, when put in this kind of situation, to wait at least a month before discontinuing care?  Maybe.  But we have to be attentive to the details of each individual case.

     One thing is certain, however: the lawyer for the step-father, John Egan, is working hard to deflect attention away from his client’s responsibility.  I spit when I read this line:

“Once the public becomes
aware of how quickly the department sought to remove food and water
from this child it will stimulate an effort to reform the process at
the DSS and in the courts that led to this tragic result,” Egan said.

 He’s making it sound like DSS is responsible for "this tragic result."  That is not true.  The step-parents, and, I would argue, parents, are wholly and completely responsible for what has happened to Haleigh.  And that is what we must always keep front and center in this case.