Published: June 10, 2009 05:00 pm      

When courts get involved

A 13-year-old cancer patient underwent chemotherapy in Minnesota last month in spite of his family’s objections.

The young man’s parents said they were supporting their son’s decision to refuse medical treatment for religious reasons. They had said they would give chemotherapy a try, but they stopped after a single treatment when the chemicals made the boy sick.

Courts have been consistent in their rulings regarding the rights of children to medical care. Judges have ruled that even though adults might have the right to refuse such care on religious grounds, they do not have the right to deny that care to their children.

The California Supreme Court, for example, ruled that a mother could be prosecuted for involuntary manslaughter when her child died of meningitis. She had sought to heal the child through prayer, but prosecutors argued she should have sought medical treatment. The court made the ruling even though California law specifically exempts treatment by spiritual means from the definition of child neglect.

In the Minnesota case, the teenager’s mother took her son on a cross-country journey in an effort to protect him from a medical procedure she did not believe would make him well. She came home after her husband issued a public appeal and authorities promised she would face no criminal charges.

Physicians say the boy has a 90 percent chance of survival with chemotherapy. Without it, they say, his chances would have been 5 percent.

Perhaps most of us agree with the judges in finding that the parents in these cases are wrong. Children are too young to decide for themselves, and they should not be allowed to die simply because their parents are too stubborn to allow medical science to work its wonders.

It’s a compelling argument.

Placing ourselves in the shoes of these parents, we might have chosen differently. Perhaps we would throw everything we could find at the disease. Trying both prayer and medical science, both the traditional and the experimental.

Still, we are left to ponder how we would react if the roles here were reversed. What if the folks who question medical science were in the majority? Would we be willing to have their judgment imposed on us?



– Pharos-Tribune, Logansport, and Kokomo Tribune