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Medical Decision Making By And On Behalf Of Adolescents: Reconsidering First Principles, B. Jessie Hill
Medical Decision Making By And On Behalf Of Adolescents: Reconsidering First Principles, B. Jessie Hill
Faculty Publications
The school nurse cannot give your teenage daughter an aspirin for her headache without your permission, but that same daughter can get an abortion without even informing you. Or can she? The obligations on medical personnel providing care to adolescents are famously indeterminate.
Two common-law presumptions have long lurked in the background, but, far from elucidating matters, those presumptions have contributed to the state of confusion. The first presumption is that, absent any special rule, children lack the legal authority to consent to medical treatment on their own. A parallel and corresponding presumption is that parents have a legal entitlement …
The Constitutional Right To Make Medical Treatment Decisions: A Tale Of Two Doctrines, B. Jessie Hill
The Constitutional Right To Make Medical Treatment Decisions: A Tale Of Two Doctrines, B. Jessie Hill
Faculty Publications
The Supreme Court has taken very different approaches to the question whether individuals have a right to make autonomous medical treatment choices, depending on the context. For example, in cases concerning the right to choose ¿partial-birth¿ abortion and the right to use medical marijuana, the Supreme Court reached radically different results, based on radically different reasoning.
More recent developments, including last Term's decision in Gonzales v. Carhart, have only highlighted the doctrinal confusion and the need for a resolution. In light of this pressing need, the goal of this Article is to view all of the constitutional cases touching on …