Children are routinely excluded from expressing their opinions involving medical decisions that affect them. This article discusses the complex reasons why children’s voices typically are not heard in the US, the consequences of their dis-empowerment, and the ethical obligations of health care providers to advocate for the rights of children even in the absence of a legal mandate to do so.
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Category Archives: Academic Papers
When is Public Private?
There is significant evidence that the growth of contracting, coupled with an unrealistic and narrow understanding of state action, has created a jurisprudence that is, as one scholar has put it, “significantly underprotective of constitutional rights.”
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A Just World at Peace
The tension between peace and justice is an enduring one in human history. The goal of civilized societies is to achieve a just peace; that is, to create institutions that allow citizens to settle even their deepest differences without violence or the disenfranchisement of dissenting voices.
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The Muffled Voice of The Child: American Health Care & Children’s Rights
The American legal system accords a high value to personal and bodily autonomy; in the context of medical care, physicians who violate patient autonomy may even be subject to criminal sanctions. It is axiomatic that competent individuals have the right to refuse medical treatment. But children are not recognized as competent as a matter of law. Their privacy rights may be infringed upon a showing of a significant state interest, although the state must show a compelling interest to justify similar infringements on the rights of an adult. Moreover, children are naturally dependent on parents or guardians who are legally presumed to have their best interests at heart. Lost among these legal axioms and presumptions are the voices of the children.
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A Prolegomenon on Restraint of Children: Implicating Constitutional Rights
News media have brought to public attention a disturbing number of deaths proximal to the use of physical restraints in the past year. Use of these procedures has been shown to be dangerous and lethal to patients. In this discussion we explore restraints as an intervention and argue that their use may not only be unethical as a therapeutic intervention, but that their use may have constitutional implications…
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