Who Gets to Make Medical Decisions for Your Child?

Most parents take it for granted that if their child becomes ill, they will be the ones to decide what treatment is most appropriate for their child. When a parent takes their child to the doctor and the doctor makes a diagnosis or recommends a treatment the parent disagrees with, they think they can take their child to a different doctor for a second opinion. Parents also feel they have the right to pursue alternative treatments such has homeopathy, medical trials, and naturopathy. What most parents don't realize is that if the government doesn't like a parent's decision regarding their child, the government can take the child (and often siblings) and force the treatment they prefer.

How does this happen? So simple, yet so devastating. A mother takes her child to the doctor because the child is sick. The doctor runs tests and diagnoses the child with cancer. He recommends starting chemotherapy the next day, telling the mother her child's life depends on it, that any delay may be life-threatening. The mother is devastated by the news, not sure how to explain it all to her child, and also wants to be sure the doctor didn't make some kind of mistake. So the mother tells the doctor she is going to get a second opinion before consenting to any treatment. Immediately after leaving the doctor's office, she searches online for a doctor experienced in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer, reviews his credentials, and calls the doctor making an appointment. Meanwhile, the first doctor feels the mother is being irresponsible and neglectful of her child's medical treatment. He calls Child Protective Services (CPS) and makes a report. The next day the new doctor confirms the first doctor's diagnosis, but tells the mother there are a few different treatment options that would be appropriate considering the child's condition. He tells her she needs to make a decision soon, gives her information on each of the treatments options he presented her with, and made an appointment for a week later to discuss the choice she made and proceed with treatment. Worried, the mother asks about the risk of waiting that long to start treatment, and the doctor assures her the cancer was caught early and a week won't make a difference. That afternoon when the mother and child return home, they find a CPS worker and police officer waiting for them. Over the objections of both child and mother, the child is taken away and placed in foster care. From there, the CPS worker gets a court order authorizing the treatment the first doctor recommended, keeps the child in foster care away from her mother while she goes through chemotherapy, and puts the mother's name in the Central Child Abuse Registry.

This is story is only an example and thus made up, but this type of abuse of CPS power happens in every state, every year. Sometimes the illness is physical, sometimes mental. Children have been removed because of cancer, ADHD, behavioral disorders, developmental disabilities, asthma, and many others. Only a couple cases have generated national attention. One such example is a 12 year old girl in Texas, who turned 13 shortly after diagnosis of cancer. The parents made a decision not to proceed with the radiation the doctor recommended because tests indicated their daughter may be free of cancer after the previous treatment. They felt the risks outweighed the benefits because they believed their child was now free of cancer. The doctor called CPS, the child removed to foster care. A week later tests results showed that the girl's cancer had returned, and the judge ordered the radiation treatment and continued foster care. CPS then removed the girl's siblings to foster care as well, though they were not ill and there was no indication of abuse or neglect. Because the girl was taken from their home before test results showed she had cancer again, the parents did not have the opportunity to make their own decision regarding treatment given the new information. I believe it was 2 years before the little girl got to go home, though her siblings were returned before then.

Parents no longer have the choice of how to treat their child's medical needs. Even though doctors often disagree on the best course of treatment for an illness, one doctor's opinion is all CPS needs to take control, take a child, and force medical treatment against a parent's objections. CPS may even admit there is no evidence of abuse or neglect on the part of the parents, but use the justification that the parents are committing medical neglect if they chose a treatment different from what a doctor recommends. A parent may be following the advice of a different doctor, a specialist, or be making a decision based on religious reasons. CPS believes that they alone are capable of making the best decisions for children. In America, a country in which soldiers have fought and died for our freedoms, parents cannot feel secure in their right to care for their children without government interference. This is the changing face of Liberty.