I wrote a university essay on why Jehovah's Witness minors should not be allowed to be declared "mature minors" who are competent to make their own medical decisions for themselves.
A few of my points were:
They do not have informed medical consent, because they are misinformed and misled by their church teachings as to the dangers and benefits of blood and taught to distrust the medical and legal establishment that provides them with any other information contradicting their church teachings.
Their decisions are made in a climate of psychological fear, and I outlined the severe psychological consequences of shunning if one takes a blood transfusion, especially to a child raised in the faith, who has no other family, friends, social network or means of support.
68% of people born into the Jehovah's Witnesses eventually leave, so the chances are this youth would have left also.
Now he is dead of course, so we will never know. I got an A+ on my essay. My instructor's only criticism was that it was a bit like shooting fish in a barrel because everyone knows what a lunatic fringe group JW's are. He said that the law protects the JW youths already. On that part he was mistaken. Since he made that statement, two JW teenagers have been in the news and died because medical practitioners allowed them to make the decision as mature minors. One in the US and now this one in UK. There may be many more, this is just the two I'm aware of.
I'm all for medical autonomy, even for minors, but the court precedents are to do with minors being able to seek and choose medical treatment for themselves, (birth control, abortion, etc) without their parents permission, not refuse it. Or, they are to do with being able to choose between very risky treatments without much chance of success in the case of terminal illnesses. There is also a huge issue of informed consent and actually having the correct information about the risks and benefits medically of the different treatments.
The cases of JW minors refusing blood transfusions, do not meet any of these legal tests. In cases like these, I'm in favor of them being made wards of the court and forcibly transfused. Save the life first and sort out the legalities later, I say.
Whether the child would have died anyway is irrelevant to the argument. It is quite possibly true but the issue is that they are fighting for the legal right to take away the child's only chance of survival, no matter how slim. There ought to be a law! Oh wait there is! I think the medical personnel need to pursue it more aggressively in relation to minors.
Cog