The Baby Doe Rules and Texas’s \u27Futility Law\u27 in the NICU

The applicability in the NICU of the futility provision of Texas\u27s Advance Directives Act and its relationship to the Baby Doe rules are reasonably straightforward. Nonetheless, many comments have been written about Texas\u27s so-called “futility law,” some of them complimentary and others, not so much. The most serious critiques of the Texas futility provision, however, are based upon assumptions that result from a fundamental misreading of the law. After a brief discussion of the futility provision and its principal features, this Essay examines the misunderstandings that plague many critiques of the law and then offers a list of proposed amendments to the law that address some of the actual deficiencies in the futility provision