Court forcing 16 yr old with cancer into chemo

[blueerica]

I'm with EH1812 on this one. It's a big can of worms when there isn't something firm. In my experience, most 16 year-olds can make rational and reasonable decisions regarding their health as much as almost any 32 year-old. 16 year olds and 32 year olds can both be suicidal, stupid, life-loving and intelligent, motivated and unmotivated - I feel as though age hardly plays a role in how much one wants to live, and how much one wishes for a quality of life to their liking.

Unfortunately, I didn't not follow this thread or the news all the way through, so perhaps there's an explained reason that I'm just not going to take the time to research. What I don't understand is, why did the law have to get involved in the first place? With the chemo kid, he'd been through it before and didn't want to go through chemo again. I can't think of a single person who has had an amazingly awesome experience with chemo. If you'd been through it once or twice before, only to end up with cancer again, would you want to give it a third try. It's like getting punched twice, and then going for another hit, just to see if it hurts less.

While I am always in favor of making health care available, I am more-or-less against making it mandatory. In many instances, I'd prefer a final judgment, should something like this ever make it to court, be deferred to the parents or parental guardians with heavy influence from the patient/teenager/kid. What every human wants in terms of their health and their life should be taken into consideration by the law, no matter their age.