Democracy for Vancouver

When you allow your courts to charge 12-year-olds as adults, it’s hard to deny an 8th grader the right to passive suicide:

SEATTLE, Washington (AP) — A few hours after a judge ruled that a 14-year-old Jehovah’s Witness sick with leukemia had the right to refuse a blood transfusion that might have helped him, the boy died, a newspaper reported.
…
Earlier Wednesday, Skagit County Superior Court Judge John Meyer had denied a motion by the state to force the boy to have a blood transfusion. The judge said the eighth-grader knew “he’s basically giving himself a death sentence.”

“I don’t believe Dennis’ decision is the result of any coercion. He is mature and understands the consequences of his decision,” the judge said during the hearing.

“I don’t think Dennis is trying to commit suicide. This isn’t something Dennis just came upon, and he believes with the transfusion he would be unclean and unworthy.”

Doctors had given Dennis a 70 percent chance of surviving the next five years with the transfusions and other treatment, the judge added.

It is easy to say that a 14-year-old is “mature and understands the consequences of his decision,” but much harder to get at what understanding consequences for a 14-year-old boy really means.

I remember being 14, and there was a lot of magical thinking that went into my hopes for thinner legs, greater athletic ability, and just one phone call from a guy who wasn’t one of my two gay best friends.

I am not making light of his situation at all, but to me the fact that this young man believed that a transfusion would make him “unclean and unworthy” is exactly the kind of thinking that would make him believe that a God who told him not to get a blood transfusion would also save him from that decision - whether he voiced his hope for a miracle to his caregivers or not.

Research into the brains of teens shows a stark connection between understanding consequences and brain maturity:

Studies show that the ability to plan improves with age until adulthood, since the process requires a temporary mental workspace—”working memory”—which is still developing throughout adolescence (pdf). … [T]eens are prone to certain types of flawed logic or to ignoring cues about how questions are framed in their decision-making. Again, such observations suggest that one reason adolescents may have limited cognitive ability to simultaneously process information about antecedents and outcomes, hold it in working memory, and use it to make decisions is likely traceable, in part, to brain circuitry not fully developed and still under construction, particularly in the prefrontal cortex of the frontal lobes.

Whatever their religion - or the religion of their guardians - children should not be given the right to make life and death decisions. We do not let 14-year-olds drive cars or drink or join the military or even vote because we realize their judgment is not mature - why should we let them decide to refuse lifesaving medical treatment? Let them make those decisions when they get to be adults; I’m sure Jehovah will forgive them for society’s sin of saving their lives.

Hat tip to PZ for the link and his intolerance for the religious indoctrination of children.