Texas Legislative Guide

For years, Texas lawmakers have struggled for an answer to a pressing question about end-of-life care: Should families or medical professionals make the final decision to end life-sustaining treatment for a terminally ill patient?

Some want to prohibit physicians from discontinuing care against a family’s wishes, while others want to give patients and their surrogates more discretion, but preserve a physician’s ability to make a medical judgment to end treatment. Neither side made much progress this session. 

But lawmakers did pass what's referred to as "right to try" legislation, a bill that would allow terminally ill patients who have exhausted other treatment options to try experimental drugs that have passed at least the first of three FDA trial phases.

Updated: May 28, 2015