But it doesn’t mean that 12 year old children are able to make decisions with the same foresight that experience provides.

As a former 12 year old and the mother of two sons whose decisions have been alarming if not deadly, I haven’t changed my mind after reading your story, but my heart goes out to all suffering children and their parents. And to you for the work you do.

No naming of names… but consider a 12 -year-old who has spent about half her short life battling a brain tumor. She’s now dealing with a second recurrence (most people don’t survive a first recurrence of this sort of tumor). She knows more about surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, rehab … you name it … than the vast majority of so-called adults. She doesn’t want to spend what she understands will likely be the last few months of her life incapacitated by the side effects of one more experimental treatment that her doctors think might extend her life by 6 months. Her biggest worry is that she will disappoint her father, a “never say die” sort of guy. But in her wisdom, she knows that dad is in denial, and fighting his own demons. This 12-year-old sage takes upon herself the burden of counseling her father, helping him to come to terms with impermanence.

Need I say more?

Perhaps these standards should be made more stringent, but that’s a hard case to make unless we’re going to deny a great many people the “right to refuse” unwanted medical interventions.

Some 13-year-olds do have the experience and wisdom to make life and death decisions. Indeed, it’s only because we’re fortunate enough to live in a time and place where such decisions only press occasionally that we have the luxury of relieving most 13-year-olds of such a burden.

You were the second smartest 13 year old. (Although I would admit – you very likely had qualifications I lacked.)

Religious freedom ends where someone else’s freedom and/or safety is involved.

I wonder about that. Often one aspect of a pubescent child’s development gets out in front of others, and such a person might give the impression he is more competent than he really is.

I know native Americans have a fondness for gambling (living near some casinos) and I know about stuff like peyote. But I don’t recall reading in school that tribal Walgreen’s vitamin dispensaries were part of any happy hunting grounds.

I think the Judge made the right ruling in this particular case, because this particular 13-year-old isn’t able to articulate anything like a “rational explanation” for his position. Also, his “religious” objections to chemotherapy only surfaced after he had gone through one round of chemo, with predictable misery inducing side effects. However, there certainly are 13-year-olds who can “argue their case” for rejecting treatment as well as, if not better than, a large number of people who have attained the “age of majority.” In such cases, the law should protect their “right” to refuse treatment.

I think another problem in this case is the phony “Native American” Nemenhah sect, which I view as nothing but a creative use of badly framed laws to orchestrate a tax dodge…

I might order the parents into treatment too, but that regimen would not consist of anything resembling chemo.

It appears the boy will die without chemotherapy, and would likely be saved by it. He’s 13. What is the State’s proper role here?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30763438/

In other news, if I ever have children, I will immediately be founding a new religion: the Church of the Rod. Our sole tenet will be the belief that misbehaving children are possessed by evil spirits who take up residence in the rear end, and the only way to drive them out is with judicious and sudden application of force.