Posted on 02/08/2014 2:47:33 PM PST by workerbee
**SNIP**
The Hershbergers say assigning a guardian to have the final say robbed them of their constitutional rights. They're appealing under the Ohio Health Care Freedom Amendment that voters approved in 2011. The amendment prohibits any law from forcing Ohioans to participate in "a health care system."
**SNIP**
"Allowing an uninterested third-party, one that has never even met the family or the child, to assert an interest in an exceedingly important parental decision will completely undermine the parent-child relationship," Thompson said in a filing with the Ohio Supreme Court.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Forced euthanasia, forced sterilization, forced abortion will not be far behind when the state has universal healthcare, and the right to make decisions for people. Ask the Chinese.
The parents do not have the legal right to harm their child, period. Refusing to have the child treated is morally the same as refusing to feed the child and thus is an act of harm. To my knowledge, no court has ever sided with the parents in such a case.
BTW, evidence-based medicine means that the treatment has been tested in large-scale studies and determined to be equal to or better than other existing treatments for the same condition. Physicians are trained to practice evidence-based medicine. As far as I know, there has never been a study where a proposed treatment was euthanasia—such a study cannot exist, since euthanasia would lead to a worse outcome (faster death) than any existing treatment or no treatment.
Yes, we all know that a woman can kill her child at any time as long as the child is still attached by the placenta. This case has nothing to do with that. Also, maybe you are not aware of this, but the government pays for treatments for kids whose families can't afford it. There are also many charities who will help families pay for cancer treatments. Did you know that St. Jude's Children's hospital operates purely on donations and never charges families for cancer treatments for their children? Not having money is not an excuse.
As to whether this kid will die without “treatment” we don’t know IMHO. People are cured through faith sometimes. Probably more often than we will ever know... To that there is no doubt in my mind.
The survival time of untreated leukemia is measured in weeks. People do not survive cancer without treatment. Many people do not survive even with treatment. The survival rate of treated leukemia is around 85%.
At any rate, not trusting the parents to make these decisions and turning it over to the state is a slippery slope that perhaps we should not go down...
Where parents make decisions that are actively harmful for their child, the state can and does step in all the time. There is no slippery slope here. Parents do not have the absolute right to starve their children, beat them, expose them to pornography, etc. Refusing life-saving medical treatment is in the same category.
And your father was an adult who understood the consequences of his decision.
Is the treatment 100% guaranteed? 80%? 50%? Can anyone ever really know? Who says “when”? Would you advocate this girl be forcibly removed from her parents’ home so that she gets “approved” treatment? Is natural death ever acceptable?
Obviously on some level I’m playing devil’s advocate here, but I think it’s an issue conservatives should be concerned about — now more than ever. At what point IS it a parent’s right to overrule “their betters” when it comes to their children? Because the same arguments I’ve read here could apply to everything from outlawing homeschooling to removing children from “superstitous” (i.e. religious) homes.
I will go out on a limb and assume that these parents are adults too.
“the government pays for treatments for kids whose families can’t afford it.”
Through Medicaid... And according to the law, the parents are responsible for paying it back.
Some hospital will pick up the tab... But most will not. We just had a huge fundraiser for a child in Idaho to pay for treatment. People came through in this case, and the child got the treatment... The state didn’t pick it up and neither did the hospitals. It was charity that covered it.
As adults, they have the legal right to make that decision for themselves, but not for their child. A child is not considered capable of understanding fully the consequences of such a decision, and the legal assumption is that the child would take the life-saving treatment if he or she were able to understand the alternatives.
If the issue were that the child will die in 2 months without treatment, and in 6 months with treatment, then I think the parents’ decision to withhold treatment would probably be allowed.
What is the point of legal guardianship then? Why should anyone bother to raise their children if the state owns them?
Medicine is an art not a science. It can't make guarantees like that about anything.
Actually, we do know how effective treatment is--as I already said, it is better than 85% for leukemia. And I am perfectly okay with children being removed from the homes of abusive parents, no matter what form that abuse takes. Refusing proper medical care for a child, to the point where that child dies, is extremely abusive, IMO.
Obviously on some level I’m playing devil’s advocate here, but I think it’s an issue conservatives should be concerned about — now more than ever. At what point IS it a parent’s right to overrule “their betters” when it comes to their children? Because the same arguments I’ve read here could apply to everything from outlawing homeschooling to removing children from “superstitous” (i.e. religious) homes.
You have to apply intelligence and logic to the situation, and judge the situation on its merits. Telling parents that they have no right to refuse medical treatment for their child who will die without that treatment is not even comparable to home schooling. Do children die from being home schooled? Or from going to church on Sunday? I don't think so. Unless the parents are actively harming their children, how they raise them is their business.
So, do you think parents should be allowed to beat their children to death? How about starving them? How about parents forcing them to watch while they kill their pet puppies or kittens—or who force the children to kill their pets themselves? Do you really think the government has no right or duty to intervene when parents grossly mistreat or fail to take care of their children?
FYI, being against child abuse is *not* the same as saying the state owns the children.
I am always amazed by the number of people who think everything is an absolute.
That is an absurd straw man. Pure sophistry.
O-kay.
Absolutely correct. The parents do not have the right to deny their child a potentially life-saving treatment.
I understand the concerns of people who feel that it's just another step to the point at which the government begins to dictate everything that happens to your child, but this really is a very different situation.
That said, it is conceptually very complicated. As a doc I have to acknowledge that medical opinions are clearly not always right, and I could see a situation arising in which a treatment is ‘mainstream’, but actually harmful (e.g. we killed George Washington by bleeding him). I think any case in which physicians feel it is imperative to override parental wishes has to be very carefully considered and reviewed by a ‘non-government’ private board of those knowledgeable enough to make a very informed decision.
Hodgkin's lymphoma, for example, is absolutely curable, with very high success rates. To withhold chemo from a child with Hodgkin's is very much interpretable as murder. On the other hand, if a specific live virus vaccine were developed and mandated by government for all schoolchildren, and the parents were legitimately concerned about exposure to this new live virus vaccine, I would have a very hard time accepting forced vaccination.
Refusing to provide basic care for a child, whether it is medical care, food, shelter, etc., is all child abuse. And that is how the law considers it.
That is too silly to discuss.
I agree with the sentiment expressed here but have read that the newer chemo drugs are much easier on the system. These, however, are the $30,000+/month variety. I could afford a week or so of that treatment.
Chemotherapy is hardly "basic" care.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.