This article is heartbreaking. It details the stories of several families who weren’t allowed to be at the bedside of a dying loved one because same-sex partners aren’t considered “real” family members. I’ve already seen it being used by marriage equality activists to emphasize the importance of marriage rights — after all, it’s grossly unfair that same-sex couples can’t marry and simply have these rights handed over to them. And as the article details, even having all your legal documents prepared doesn’t guarantee that you’re going to be treated fairly in an emergency.
But what I find more interesting is the question of why we privilege marriage and blood relations over other, less traditional relationships. For the many of us who have built our lives far away from our immediate family members — and even for many of us who stay close — “family” includes a more complex network of friends and loved ones. I can understand why we wouldn’t want friends making end-of-life or important medical decisions without some sort of legal authorization — those things are complicated enough with only family and legally-designated guardians involved — but joining a sick person at their bedside? Surely wedding vows or blood relations shouldn’t be a prerequisite.
I hear you on that Jill. No question that the story is heartbreaking. And that issue has always been one of the more broadly appealing arguments for gay marriage or, at the very least, civil unions. But for the same reasons that allowing individuals who are not legally appointed or blood related make decisions for you, there is at least potential for problems if there isn’t some way to verify that the person at your bedside is in fact someone close. That’s not to say there isn’t a practical and common sense way to avoid the situation you linked to. But hospitals can’t go letting anyone who claims to be close to a patient into the room. And I’m not saying your post was saying that, I’m just sayin.
The unhusband and I are not legally married and I know that he and my children are the ones I want around me at the end. All that should matter is the love shared between the individuals involved. We privilege blood relations because the ties support the patriarchal family. Lets be honest being blood related to someone is not always a good thing. My mother is the last person I would want to make medical decisions for me in the event that I was incapacitated and yet there cannot be a closer blood relation to be (other than my kids who are minors). It assumes that all relationships are healthy and as we know many families are highly dysfunctional.
What’s really maddening about the case is they had her sign some of the medical documents– clearly showing they knew she had legal proxy– and then still kept her and their children out of the room, and still refused to give any information.
i hear you on that Renee…i have distanced myself from my father, and wouldn’t want him near me while i’m sick or in my death bed. my stepdad has been more of a father to me than my biological father, but his relationship to me is only due to being married to my mother. family can include friends and non-blood related family members (incidentally, my grandparents on my stepdad’s side have expressed numerous times that they’re more proud of my brother and me than they are of their “real” grandchildren–hell they just find it refreshing that they don’t have to lock up valuables when my brother and i visit).
laws like to create strict boundaries, as in what is and what is not. there are no middle grounds. it’s ridiculous that same sex couples are not allowed to see each other in the event of an emergency–what about those whose families have disowned them, and their partners are all they have?? this absolutely needs to change.
Somebody needs to submit legislation, call it the Patients’ Freedom and Security Act or some such, creating a registry to tie in with a person’s medical records, indicating a) nonrelated family/friends/advocates who they want to have access/decisionmaking power, and b) family members they wish to exclude from having decisionmaking power. Make it an offense with a significant fine attached for a medical institution to ignore this, if they deny authority to someone on the first list, and double it if they pass them over for someone on the second list.
Honestly, keeping authority in the hands of someone who knows what you want and whom you trust to provide that, should be everyone’s right. And fuck it, if you’re dying, you should be able to see anyone you damn well please.
I don’t think the problem is so much “anti-gay” as it is the stupid HIPPA law that has really had some unintended consequences.
That said, i think anytime you have non-blood relatives on the scene you need to have it in writing and carry the documents or have them easily accessible.
Kyra, that’s probably a good solution.
Renee, no doubt that you are the only one to decide your relationships with other people and whether you want them at your bedside. But if you are in a condition that prevents you from communicating this, what else is the hospital to go on? They use the standards they use because that is what’s available.
Pauline, this problem predates HIPAA by a very long time. Hospitals have *always* refused to let non-family members in when people are critically injured or dying, unless there is a family member present to give permission.
You might check out the Alternatives to Marriage Project. I’m a big fan of most of the views they express, and that’s exactly it: why do we value marriage over all other relationships?
I propose the following sweeping changes in our society.
1. Any two adults can, by mutual consent, form a civil marriage partnership working basically like civil marriages do today for hetero-married people.
2. Any two adults can, by mutual consent, adopt each other as legal siblings, working basically like sibling relationships do in the law today (ie, next-of-kin rules, etc.) People can have as many adopted siblings as they want. Since sibling relationships in law and medicine generally confer legal rights but not legal responsibilities, there should be a vast social dialogue about our legal and social responsibilities to our siblings.
I don’t think the problem is so much “anti-gay” as it is the stupid HIPPA law that has really had some unintended consequences.
There is nothing in HIPAA that dictates who can and cannot see the patient.
I am so glad that civil unions or even defacto relationships have the same rights as marriage in NZ now… when my father was dying in hospital, 19 years old, hit by a drunk driver dropping my godfather home from my mother’s birthday, not only was she not allowed to see him but they didn’t even tell her when he died. She had to find out via my grandmother. Fucking sick.
The only real upside of this is that deaths in hospitals, including ICUs or trauma units, are now relatively rare, and most of those deaths occur in a time frame too short to allow anyone visitation anyway (as in cases where someone was rushed there after an accident).
Nowadays the penultimate scene in Love Story would play out in hospice, not in a hospital. Hospitals (at least in the U.S.) want as few people dying on the premises as possible, and so do insurance companies; if patients are terminal, in most cases they will be moved to hospice care, which is much less expensive. Even when patients are full code (i.e. their advance directive says they want resuscitation, intubation, whatever it takes to keep them alive), they usually aren’t kept in ICUs for extended periods of time; they’re only taken there from their regular rooms if both absolutely necessary and medically prudent to do so, and that’s rarely the case.
Also, even if you are permitted into the ICU, they can still kick you out of there whenever they want to, or severely curtail the hours when visitation is allowed. If someone is having an emergency procedure done, it’s highly unlikely they are going to allow visitors in, no matter who they are. (I’ve actually worked in hospitals and reported directly to ICU doctors, that’s how I know that.)
But however infrequently this applies, shutting people out of visitation who patients actually want there by their sides (and would be allowed there if they were legally married or immediate family) is just plain wrong. I can understand not wanting tons of people milling around in an ICU, but patients should be able to name two or three people who would be allowed in and all hospital personnel should be made to honor their wishes. It sounds like the behavior of the hospital personnel in both of the cases named in the NYT story was acting in violation of hospital policy. Why bother spending all that money getting papers done, if people who work in hospitals are just going to be allowed to spit on them?
Seconding (thirding?) Kyra.
it’s actually worse than this.
once a person becomes a legal adult, their parents/sibling/relatives canNOT make medical decisions for that adult WITHOUT a medical power of attorney.
now, this doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen – most places have regulations that say if a person is not capable of consenting, they may go to X person (spouse, parent, sibling, child, is the order i think) – but these “consents”? aren’t actually legal (except for the spouse) once a person hits 18. i have absolutely NO clue why this hasn’t been changed before now.
when i had all those surgeries last year, my surgeon told me to fill out a medical power of attorney. this is how i found out. he told me, i told him my dad was going to be there, he showed me my birthdate and said that my dad could *not* legally make *ANY* decision for me (medical or otherwise) without my consent. period. and the *only* ways that he would be allowed were with A)a medical power of attorney or B)if i were dying and totally unable to communicate, but thay the hospital had a policy of strict adherence to the law, so if that happened, *all* the hospital would do is try to stabalize me while they got a court order to allow my dad to consent for me.
and medical powers of attorney are often ignore. my boyfriend and i each have one for the other. a few months ago, out of nowhere he was hit with a migrain that made him faint. (literally made him faint) i got him to the ER, had the medical POA, and NO ONE WOULD TALK TO ME AT ALL. boyfriend laid on a gurney for 4 hours until he was able to talk – they wouldn’t even take his damned temp until he gave permission. they sure as fuck were not going to evalute and treat him until he did.
and i was standing right next to him HOLDING THIS POA. and every medical person told me that they would not accept it. it was NOTARIZED. they legally had to. but they refused.
what if he had had an anyuerism? what if he had been dying? i wasn’t his wife, and so no amount of LEGAL paperwork mattered to them.
and boyfriend doesn’t actually have ANY blood family left! he has a step-brother who lives in CA (we are in Ohio) and that’s IT except for me.
we honestly may *have* to get married just so we can get the fucking POAs to work!
*sighs* I think the definition of family should be left up to families to decide for themselves.
In Britian most people still die in hospital.
A friend of mine had a terrible time when her female partner died of cancer. Although she had had a good relationship with her partner’s family, this all changed the day after her partner died. The family turned up at their house with a van and proceeded to load it with furniture and possessions from the house. My friend said she was just in too much shock to even try and stop them. This and the story below was way before civil partnerships were an option in Britain.
When my partner had serious mental health problems the psychiatrist refused to let me be present while he talked to her as I wasn’t a relative or her next of kin. After that first meeting I did complain and manage to make sure this never happened again. But it was scary as I knew the psychiatrist was making decisions about her treatment without anyone there to advocate for her or even to give information about what she had been like at home – she was too depressed to mumble more than the occasional word so she couldn’t tell him.
Before civil partnerships, the prospect of being excluded from a hospital when my partner was too ill to communicate used to worry me. Things have changed over the last 20 years, but at one time many if not most families were not at all accepting of their child’s same sex partner.
You don’t want to give rights to people, you want to prevent their removal. That’s how I’d frame it, anyway.
If you are straight and married, and your husband has an emergency and is in the hospital dying, the hospital will let you in, period. That’s true even if you don’t have documentation. You just say, “I’m his wife” and you get in. That’s how it works.
If you are gay, and your significant other (who you couldn’t love more, even if you were allowed to get married) has an emergency and is dying, you will see your significant other only if the hospital staff decides they want to let you. That’s how it works.
Documentation, schmockumentation. It’s discrimination.
I was lucky, because when my significant other broke her back, almost died, and made it through alive but paralyzed, the staff of the hospital decided I could sit by her bedside while her heart, thankfully, kept beating. We were out of town for a quick visit when it happened, so I didn’t have a folder of ridiculous documentation with me. I was terrified and at their mercy.
Because hospital staff makes all decisions in these things, bad stuff like this happens even in gay-friendly places, like Seattle. http://www.newsweek.com/id/81305
Hi Dana, fellow Kiwi here. I’m also glad we have full legal recognition of defacto relationships now, though the thought that goes through my mind is that this is only a NZ thing. Would a legally recognised defacto partnership or civil union be recognised in Australia, the UK or US if I were to travel with a partner? Also, my understanding of the defacto recognition is that it’s mostly aimed at equal separation of assets if the relationship ends. I’m not sure how it works for conferring next of kin status or other legal rights & responsibilities during the relationship.
More to read up on, I guess. The examples in the story are heartbreaking.