If a teenager is not deemed mature enough to make decisions for herself then the decision should be up to her legal guardians, not the court.
In Greek mythology, Cassandra was cursed to know the future, but also to have her prophecies disbelieved by others.
Even the brightest and “most mature” 17yo is an unformed, uninformed idiot on most large issues. Just because they can articulate their thoughts at an adult level doesn’t mean those thoughts are far above juvenile wishful thinking.
Yes, chemo is poison - it says so right on the bottle. It’s poisoning a person within the barest fraction of an inch of their life to kill the cancer one step ahead of killing the patient, and in many cases it can buy between a decade and a full lifetime of added years. Cassandra C. is going to die a very unpleasant (and expensive) death in a few months without treatment. With treatment, she has a high chance (80% or better) of living out a normal adult lifespan.
If she wants to die, that door is to her immediate left and no one can stop her. But as someone in a class too young and shallowly stupid to handle truly life-or-death decisions, allowing her to choose to forego life-saving medical treatment would be a criminal failure of society.
Yes, I read her passionate essay this morning. I wrote such things when I was that age, too. My (many) kids have done the same. Only the perspective of added years shows up how truly shallow such pretensions to wisdom are.
She can quit treatment and die (on her own dime) at 18. She can take the quick exit now. But the court was right to override her juvenile whims at this point.
You can dismiss her wishes but why should the choice go to the courts then? why isn’t her mother the one making the decisions now?
The way I see it is there has to be a line somewhere. While 18 is somewhat arbitrary, it serves as a useful metric for dividing child from adult. That she is only a few months from 18 isn’t the point. If they moved the line to 17, then we’d have the same argument about a 16 year old two months from being 17.
Make a line then stick to it. Sucks for her*, but the people making the line weren’t trying to screw her over when they made it.
*Or not as the case may be. She might well end up benefitting from the ‘injustice.’
I’m not Shodan, but I say yes. Why shouldn’t they?
Conversely, if it’s so great for minors, why don’t we expand it to all people? If imprisoning people in order to perform invasive and painful procedures against their will is so great below age 18, why not extend those “benefits” to people of all ages?
It’s not because you want the freedom to make medical decisions for yourself, but don’t think other people are as smart or as deserving of that privilege as you, is it? You want to decide for yourself AND other people what medical procedures they should undergo?
Are minors eligible to be nominated for Darwin Awards?
We don’t allow legal guardians to let the minors in their care needlessly die.
Mothers don’t generally have the right to make decisions that cause the death of their children. She’s responsible for the welfare of her child and is choosing to let her child die of cancer rather than get chemo.
If the kid didn’t have a parent, we wouldn’t let them choose death over treatment without going to court.
If the kid has a parent who wants to choose death over treatment, it would go to court, if only to be sure that the kid’s welfare is considered.
That’s the key step in this.
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Until the arbitrary age of 18, a person is a minor and not given the right to have complete control of his/her medical care.
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A parent in control of their child’s medical care is not allowed to make choices that cause harm to their child.
I don’t know that I agree with both of those things in an absolute sense, but given those points, the ruling makes sense.
In an unrelated hijack, I ask wryly how we can live in a country that doesn’t provide government-funded health care, yet can force people to undergo expensive medical treatments.
The ScienceBlog article that Jackmannii linked has a lot more information on that. From the way I read it, the mother was ordered to get her to doctors and get her treatment in September (when she was 16), but they’ve repeatedly missed appointments including the ones made to diagnose the lump that ended up being cancer. DCF did an investigation and removed Cassandra from her mother’s home, either in part or in whole because of her mother acting in bad faith with regard to getting her daughter treatment. It’s unclear to me if anything besides the cancer issue was used to make the decision about Cassandra’s custody.
I assume, that’s why this particular court hearing was about whether Cassandra was mature enough to make the decisions herself instead of having the state do it. Her mother already temporarily lost custody of her in November.
Explain the concept of death to a three-year-old. Heck, explain the concept of ‘forever’ to a three-year-old, then come back here and report on how it went.
That’s why.
Would you allow a three-year-old to play with matches? How about with a loaded gun?
That’s the same logic: some people, by virtue of youth or mental disability, don’t have the ability to grasp risks and benefits. It’s not because they’re not as smart or as deserving, but because they DON’T UNDERSTAND.
Look at the toddler who killed his mom in Wal-Mart last week. Do you think he had the intent of ending her life, removing her presence from his life forever? Do you think he understood beforehand that that is what might happen?
Cassandra isn’t three. However, we have an arbitrary line, AND the opportunity to prove that any given individual deserves to be on the other side of it. In this case, “respondents have failed to meet their burden of proving under any standard that Cassandra was a mature minor and capable of acting independently.” If somebody is not capable of acting independently, what should happen?
Go back to our three-year-old. If the kid cuts himself and is not capable of putting on a bandage, should the adults around him ignore his injury, under the theory that he has the right to decide about a bandage even if he doesn’t know what a bandage is or which cabinet contains them?
I’m interested to know why a decision not to use medical treatment that’s based in religious conviction is acceptable, but a decision based in personal conviction is not.
The law does not allow the death penalty to be applied to a minor, concluding that the level of brain development even as one approaches age 18 is insufficient to enable the minor to fully appreciate the moral and societal consequences involved in taking a life. Similar reasoning would indicate that a minor likewise lacks the mental capacity to evaluate the decision to take her own life.
When it’s a minor child whose life is at stake, neither are acceptable.
17 isn’t 3. But I’m more interested in why anyone’s religious conviction is given credibility, but a personal conviction is not.
That makes sense. I wasn’t thinking that far back.
Once you’re an adult, you’re allowed to make stupid decisions - even those that might harm or kill you.
But society (and this is a principle I agree with) says that children sometimes have to be protected from their own poor decision-making skills.
Some people may disagree and feel that children should have the same absolute right to make decisions for themselves that adults have. But you need to recognize that’s not a widely held position.
And the court recognized this. The law does say that in some circumstances a person under the age of eighteen may be given the rights of an adult under the “mature minor” principle. This was considered in this case and denied. Just because the possibility exists doesn’t mean it has to be granted.
That’s the separate issue of parental rights. As I said above, people have a broad right to make decisions that harm themselves. But the right to make decisions that harm somebody else is much narrower. A parent has pretty broad authority over their child but it’s not absolute. A parent may have a right to refuse medical treatment for themselves but not have the right to refuse that same medical treatment for their child.