Connecticut can now force a 17-year old to undergo chemotherapy

Great Debates
1

From the Washington Post:

When someone wants to be an idiot with their own life, I think they should be allowed when they are an adult. I draw the line when someone wants to be an idiot with the life of a minor under their control, however. For example, I am all for freedom of religion and have zero problems if some idiot Christian Scientist dies because he eschewed medical care, but I feel that a parent who endangers their infant children can and should have the state intervene.

However, 17 years old is hardly an infant. In many cultures Cassandra would be considered an adult and even in this one, a 17-year old can get married, emancipated, raise a child of her own.

The Connecticut Supreme Court says that Mature minor doctrine might apply but doesn’t here, which reads to me that the court feels that a 17-year old - or at least this particular 17-year old - lacks the maturity to make this decision.

I have a problem with this, mainly because her mother has also had the decision stripped from her. According to NPR, “A court gave the state Department of Children and Families temporary custody of Cassandra, as well as the authority to make medical decisions for the teen, after doctors reported Fortin for neglect. Court papers document missed appointments and arguments with doctors over her daughter’s diagnosis.”

I am far from a wackadoo anti-doctor Libertarian. I think that this girl and her mother are making dumb choices and I think that she will pay for them by dying from a condition that has a success rate of 85% if she just had the treatment.

I don’t even necessarily have a problem with the courts deciding that this particular 17-year old is not mature enough to make this decision (although I would like to know how they came to that conclusion since I don’t think her age alone should be the sole factor).

It seems troublesome that a mother and 17-year old daughter can both have their desires for the teenager’s treatment and what can be done to her body by neatly saying that she is too young and the circular reasoning that the mother must be unfit or else why would she dare disagree with the doctors?

Oddly enough I feel that if the daughter was not seven months away from complete legal adulthood that the state would have grounds for their actions. This may seem inconsistent but I am assuming that the 17-year old has a lot better reasoning capabilities than a 7-year old and I don’t think that’s a stretch.

This case really bugs me. I know there is not going to be an easy answer here and hearing Cassandra articulate her position would assist me in deciding how “mature” she was, but I can’t think that just saying “She is choosing to die, therefore she must not know what she is choosing” is circular reasoning (see the editorial at Fox News whose headline bleats “Connecticut Supreme Court saves teen’s life.”)

I think she - and her mother - should be allowed to make a horrible decision that flies in the face of science and it pains me that the state of Connecticut won’t give her the right to control her own body, even if it’s a bad one.

Side note: I feel that many people who side with the state on this one would not be so quick to do so if the state was getting in the way of her making a reproductive choice.

2

I tend to agree with you. The one thing that holds me back from completely agreeing with you is that the mother was interviewed on the CBS news last evening, and when asked what alternative therapy they had in mind, had no answer. If they were serious about another therapy (leaving completely aside the efficacy of any alternatives), they’d have researched them, and could make an argument for their use.

They haven’t done so, and since the alternatives seem to be chemotherapy or death, I can understand the state stepping in to protect a minor.

3

From what I’ve seen of the mother I’m not impressed. She talks a lot about chemo being poison (most drugs can be described as such) but has no alternative answer. She seems to have this vague notion that if the doctors just left her kid alone she’d somehow get over this disease.

If the chances of treatment being successful were marginal it would be one thing, but we’re talking and 85% success rate here. Rejecting that seem ludicrous. I agree, if the daughter was 30 she’d have every right to be ludicrous to the point of death, but not if she’s a minor. And yes, she is a minor.

When she reaches her 18th birthday she can walk out of the hospital and stop getting treatment - even if she’s not really mature enough to make that decision, which is a possibility.

4

I agree that the mother is crazy but I find it interesting that you allow an adult to make bed decisions but not a 17-year old. Do you really think in the next seven months that she will suddenly develop some level of maturity that hasn’t happened in the preceding 17½ years?

According to The Atlantic, “a few states allow the “mature minor doctrine” which lets 16 and 17-year-olds argue in court whether they are mature enough to make medical decisions.”

Do you feel those states are wrong to allow this? Because I feel that Connecticut (and other states) are wrong to disallow it.

5

We need to remember that Hodgkin’s lymphoma is generally highly curable (as in permanently curable) by evidence-based medicine, and that forsaking that therapy is typically a death sentence.

I’d have little problem arguing on the side of “autonomy” for an intelligent 17-year-old who doesn’t want therapy with bad side effects for a cancer with a very poor prognosis. If you’re still a minor and can be saved despite the handicap of dumb parents, intervention by the state becomes more reasonable.

There have been a number of cases* like this before, involving younger patients for whom it was argued that they were smart enough to know the risks (although much of the time, it’s “parental rights” that are trumpeted by alt med advocates).

*The same source has doubts about the current case.

6

This argument is pointless. From your link in the OP, with my bolding:

7

Cassandra predicts harm will come if she undergoes chemotherapy …and no one else believes her!!!
:eek:
(Was someone just deciding to be cute with that pseudonym? Or is that her real first name and it’s the last initial that’s meant to protect her anonymity? Because if some someone from the courts assigned the name “Cassandra” as a pseudonym in this case, I need to either applaud them or “tsk-tsk” them- I can’t decide which.)

8

Since we don’t individually test people for maturity or have some sort of right of passage we rely on an arbitrary age. I agree, the girl is probably as competent now as she will be 8 months from now (or however long it is until she’s legally adult) but that’s how we do these things.

She can petition for status as an emancipated minor, which, if granted, allows her to make her own decisions as an adult. Has there been any sort of effort towards that on her part?

Nope - but that’s a situation determined on a case-by-case basis, you don’t automatically get that status merely by applying for it.

9

From a practical standpoint, how is this done? If she actively resists are orderlys pinning her done so an IV can be started? Is she then kept in restraints so she can’t pull out her catheter? Are daily oral meds being given by injection to assure compliance? Who is billed for her medical care, the state?

10

Well, of course they’d bill her family first for the medical care. Personal responsibility and all that. Only if there’s no money left will the state take up the bill.

Or so I assume - isn’t that how it usually works out in the US?

11

People have no business making decisions about their own bodies or their own health or their own lives - everybody knows that. Because you might choose wrongly.

People should have the freedom to choose, providing they do as they are told.

Regards,
Shodan

12

Causing pain and suffering against someone’s will is torture, and it doesn’t matter if they are children or that it’s “for their own good.” Forcing people to take medical treatment against their will is just fascism. People have the right to their own body.

My rule for torture has always been that, if you say it’s okay, you have to do it to yourself. So if these people want any claim on morality, I want to see them put through chemotherapy as well. Or if they think that’s too dangerous, waterboard themselves a few times–at least twice, so they know how bad it is the second and thus can have the anticipation make it worse. If you think it’s so worth it to do to others, do it to yourself.

As Shodan alludes to, would we force a 17 year old to have baby, and go through that pain? No, they can abort, ending the life of a potential human. And I’ve been okay with that because I can understand a right a woman has to her own body that has to be balanced against the baby.

But there’s no such balance here. How fickle the Dope is, the ones that go on about the right to die and against torture. It’s this sort of thing that adds to the claims of the conservatives on this board that liberals have no real values and just go by how they feel.

13

It does not seem that the teen understands the long term effects of, you know, death. I would say she is not capable of making a mature well thought out decision. Nor is her idiot mother. Whether or not the state should step in, I donno.

14

Unlike many other “choice” situations, this scenario really only has one viable answer, to take the medicine and (most likely) live a healthy life.

The other answer is so nonsensical as to provide actual evidence that the child is not mature and capable enough to make their own decision, and that the mother allowing it is neglecting her child.

The best thing you can say about an 18 year old getting her way is that she’s still not mature and capable enough to make her own decision, but the state is now powerless to do anything about it.

If the kid was 6 years old, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, at least I hope we wouldn’t be accepting a 1st grader’s choice to die, nor his idiotic mother’s acceptance of that decision. If you want the age cutoff lower than 18, that’s not unreasonable, but at some point we accept the state stepping in to make things right when the people involved aren’t.

15

In the whole, I have to disagree with the OP. We’re both in agreement that refusing to undergo chemotherapy is a bad decision in this situation. So the issue is whether the teenager and/or her mother should be allowed to make this bad decision.

I’m sure most people would agree that a minor can have restricted rights over important decisions like this. Nobody would be questioning it if it was a five-year-old refused to undergo chemotherapy. Seventeen years old is obviously close to the age of maturity but the court appears to have recognized this and has a “mature minor” principle which was considered.

There’s also the issue of parental rights over a child. Again, I think everyone would concede there are limits to what a parent can decide to do for their child. And the court appears to have considered whether this case fell beyond those limits.

The consequences in this case are serious - literally a matter of life or death. And it appears to me that the court system made a reasonable review of the situation, considered all the issues, and made a rational decision.

16

Am I a fascist because I make my 6 year old get immunizations? It’s “for his own good”, which is apparently a bullshit excuse.

Just curious, I would hate to be an accidental torturer.

17

I’m sorry but this idea seems nonsensical. Why should a judge have to undergo the treatment they are ordering? Would you argue that a judge can’t sentence somebody to prison unless they’re willing to also go to prison and serve the same sentence?

By your logic, the only way the judge could have ruled in Cassandra’s favor would be if he was willing to die alongside her.

18

So are you arguing that minors should be allowed to make their own medical decisions without any outside intervention?

19

I must be missing something. What’s odd about the name Cassandra?

20

Well, fortunately, she’ll be 18 in less than a year and then she can tell the doctors (and the courts) to **** off to her heart’s content, and take the consequences.

I’m sure there are some people (not here, necessarily) who would like to raise the age of legal adulthood to 21 or 25, to avoid things like the horrible outcome of an 18-year old deciding she doesn’t want cancer treatment. Fortunately that isn’t the law yet.

As for abortion rights, I’m against allowing 17-year olds to get elective abortion, but that’s because I want to minimize abortions, not because of maturity issues per se.