Lift Up Your Hearts!

Daniel Hauser, a 13-year-old boy with cancer, is being forced to receive treatment that both he and his parents have refused.

"It is imperative that Daniel receive the attention of an oncologist as soon as possible," wrote Brown County District Judge John R. Rodenberg in an order to "apprehend and detain....His best interests require it."

I often find myself in the minority when I argue for parental rights.  Doctors, teachers, social workers, and "concerned citizens" fret over the idea that parents should be allowed to make decisions that they believe are not in the bests interests of their children.  In one sense it's hard to blame them, as these are often people who are in a position to see better than most the consequences of physical, emotional, and educational neglect and abuse.

However, I insist that, other than in exceptional and egregious cases of insanity or malicious, criminal intent on the part of the parents, we cannot afford to entrust the care of children to anyone else, least of all a bureaucracy.  There's a quote from Rabindranath Tagore that I like:  He alone may chastise who loves.  I would also say, "He alone may decide who loves."  No one else, ultimately, can be trusted.  The judge in this case may be right, he may even be wise, but in no way can we pretend he loves Daniel.

Do I think parents make stupid mistakes?  Yes, yes, yes!  I've made enough myself.   This is where the community comes in, providing education, encouragement, and role models—but never, unless in cases of proven criminality, legal coercion.

Medical ethicists say parents generally have a legal right to make decisions for their children, but there is a limit.  "You have a right, but not an open-ended right," Arthur Caplan, director of the center for bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, said last week. "You can't compromise the life of your child."

Sounds noble, but consider what it could lead do.  Forced Caesarean sections if a doctor thinks childbirth might be risky?   Forced sterilizations of "unfit parents"?  Court-ordered immunization of children using controversial vaccines?  Jehovah's Witnesses are already being court-ordered to compromise their children's souls through blood transfusions.  (For the record, I don't agree that blood transfusions are a spiritual danger, though they may be a physical one.  But choose your own belief—what if a court ordered you to do something you knew would harm your child?)  It means very little to me that the overwhelming majority of medical opinion be against the parents; at one point in time, the overwhelming majority of medical opinion was in favor of bloodletting as a treatment, and many patients died because of it.

If the rights and responsibilities for children are not to rest securely with the parents, where shall they lie?  Whom do you trust more than yourself to make decisions for your family?  I trust (and rely on) many sources for advice, example, and support, but none—least of all a bureaucracy—for the final decision.  Parents can and will be wrong, but they are still the best hope for children.  The argument is often made that "if one child is saved" through bureaucratic intervention, that is sufficient justification.  What this logic misses is how many children are irreparably damaged by such intervention.  First, do no harm.