no matter how old they are.

what a fucking waste.

Not everyone's that pleased with the results of modern medical science, and while I don't agree with this particular decision or agree with the JW worldview, I understand that some "modern miracles" are not all they're cracked up to be. Check out Amy Silverstein's story as an example. Fact is, people get to make their own decisions, and Slog readers don't help anyone by second-guessing.

Witness Terri Schiavo and all of the lobbying against death with dignity laws.

The religious right/fundamentalist sects are just plagued by internal inconsistency and contradiction. The only hope I hold out for the 2008 election is that these contradictions become so overt that the freaks turn on each other and rip each other to shreds.

Can we get Fred Phelps to boycott the poor kid's funeral?

This is why Dennis was in the custody of his Jehovah's Witness believing aunt in Skagit County instead, and hence this why he eventually died.

This is such an awful, depressing story. There's no way to describe the sadness of this in words.

That said, I'm going to have to really stretch out of my biases here and say that... the judge made a very unpopular yet brave decision.

Yes, the fact that Dennis was still seven years away from being legally able to drink a Coors, but was sooner given the right to refuse treatment that would save his life is an agonizing fact.

But however unpopular Dennis's beliefs are from the mainstream, he did what he thought was good and not evil.

While I wouldn't consider charges of manslaughter on his aunt, I do wonder how his aunt will eventually feel. I wonder if this story becomes national how much more tarnished the view of Jehovah's Witnesses will become because of this.

What. The. Shit?

HELLO!! The hypocrite Watchtower DOES ALLOW blood and plays God with what “parts” can be taken.

As long as shit like this happens (and particularly as long as mainstream religious leaders don't unanimously denounce it) you're never going to convince me that religion deserves any amount of unconditional respect. This is just evil, and anyone who claims otherwise is an enabler.

* Will this court decision affect many age-of-consent decisions pending or in the future? If a judge can establish that a 14 year old "has the maturity to make medical and religious decisions on his/her own", then this is a slippery slope to a whole gamut of traditional age-related limitations regarding -- say -- alcohol consumption or having sex with anybody, since both are quite tied to being "medical decisions" if you slightly stretch out the phrasing. Again, this was a very unpopular and brave court decision, but with consequences I'm not sure with which I'm comfortable -- especially as a result of this.

* Was it just me who received a personal letter from a Jehovah's Witness in the Magnolia/Interbay area today stating that the end times were near and I needed to change my views? Whoever sent out this letter -- surely, you know, it was GOD's timing -- he or she (sorry, GOD) knew exactly how to synchronize the reception of this letter with reading the story about Dennis. Whoever sent me that letter: I hope you're happy with yourself sending letters day in and day out about the end times.

I wonder what any of you so called gay activists would say if the matter was was dealing with the legality of simply being gay. In Saudi Arabia, you can be killed for being "out". Are you willing to die for YOUR convictions, or are you all talk?

I know the answer...

Homosexuality is not a religion.

I don't see why these loonies are allowed to have children die the way they do. The aunt should be sent to the gallows for mind poisoning and murder.

As far as "age of consent", most religions have some sort of age guide to mark your move into adulthood. Judaism marks it as 13, I think Catholicism is right around the same age. Hell, even "primitive" cultures had rites of passage to mark your movement into the adult community, and most of them are much younger than what the U.S. marks adulthood.

The fact that the U.S. limits voting to 18 and drinking to 21 doesn't mean that you aren't intelligent enough to make informed decisions before that. They've made a baseline decision that you SHOULD be mature enough, at those ages, to handle those responsibilities. Not everyone is--some are mature younger, some are never mature enough.

Also, many courts give kids aged 12 or 13 a right to speak as to their custody arrangements in divorce situations. So obviously we acknowledge in some ways that kids have a voice in what happens to them.

Poor judicial reasoning.

Secondly, given the fact he's being fostered had a serious illness, maybe he didn't want to live. Just because we think we want something, or 'the mainstream' wants something, doesn't mean that everyone does.

What right do you have to make a teenager suffer, for a chance of survival that isn't guaranteed?

How many people have beliefs they would die for? Would you go to Burma and sit in silent protests against what you think is wrong? Would you risk going to prison to protest nuclear weapons? GM crops? Human traffiking?
Would you have sat at the front of the civil rights marches in the 60s?

What about the right of a mother to breastfeed?

Now of course many will be told that hell awaits those that defy the church, so there might be a few suicides, but they are just dieing for their beliefs, which I'm sure we all agree is a noble death.

If anyone I knew lets their kid die this way I would never speak with or associate with them again. Partly becasue of what they did, but also because I tend to avoid the terminally stupid like the plague.

Not that any other organized religion is any better....

Even as an atheist, I might come to the same decision to stop medical treatment. I often think people go too far in trying to cure a terminal illness. I've had friends die of cancer or AIDS who fought it long past when it would have done any good, and made their final time more miserable as a consequence. Of course, I see this in hindsight, and they at the time hoped they'd live. But at this point, for me, if I got cancer or some other potentially fatal illness, I'd fight it at first, but when things start going down hill, and the prospects for a cure more bleak, I'd rather just let it go.

But this kid didn't make his decision based on any sort of logic. He based his decision on his belief in a fantasy sky grandpa. The judge was a fucking moron to allow this travesty to go on, and his aunt should be in jail. I hope they both have nightmares as long as they live.

Suppose we were talking about 14 year old girl's right to have an abortion.

You people are an embarrassment.

Even still we restrict kids ability ot have a say in the matter. For example most kids would never get a shot, a sports physical, or get a cavity filled. Parents, and often society sometimes forces them to do these things, because not doing them is not rational, though a kid might not understand that yet.

here though you have a kid, whose aunt has indoctrinated him into a fantasy that tells him that he has to die. For those who say no coercion ask yourselves, do Jehovah's Witness believe in hell and our a god that punishes.

Like others have said, its about gradually increasing responsibility. Personally I don't think a 14 year old should have to think about abortion. Theres plenty of time for abortions in college, but life ain't perfect.

At 14, the human brain is still in the developmental stage. It is essentially "under construction," and gaps in mental processing most definitely exist, specifically in the areas that determine reason and judgement. This is why teenagers tend to take stupid risks, and why they are not granted much authority over their lives. Anyone who spends time with teenagers on a regular basis knows this.

The boy's willingness to embrace such an unnecessary death should not have been taken into account.

That'd be funny if it weren't so depressingly egocentric.

Abortion is fatal to the fetus. I happen to agree with the popular position that a fetus is not a "person" in the strict sense, but I'm also capable of recognizing that this is a belief and that, ultimately, all my reasons for believing it are fairly arbitrary. The standards of heartbeat, brain function and so on are all standards that I would be extremely reluctant to apply to the "personhood" of human subjects outside the womb. Given that, I apply another rationale for keeping abortions legal that doesn't involve arbitrary distinctions about whether or not it's "fatal."

Personally I don't think a 14 year old should have to think about abortion.

And I don't think a 14 year old should have to think about terminal leukemia. We live in an imperfect world. Say hello to Pollyanna for me.

And yet we let 15 year olds drive. Where, I might add, they kill themselves and other people at a rate completely out of proportion with other drivers or older inexperienced drivers. Likewise, we let them have sex with each other, and they occasionally get incredibly sick doing that.

As a society, we let teenagers make life-and-death decisions where it suits us.

This kid's decision suits me fine.

A martyr at 14... gimme a break. What year is this, 500 BC? I'm gonna run out and martyr myself for my belief that I should be able to walk into the road without getting hit by a car. I would highly recommend people to NOT come out of the closet in Saudi Arabia. Jesus Christ, I don't see you buying a plane ticket and screaming "I'M GAY" to the Islamic populace. So easy to martyr someone else.

Their body their choice, right?

The lessons I learned from the repressive religious fundamentalists I grew up around is that people should be free to live their lives as they see fit. If that means they want to make their own choices about what medical treatment they do or do not wish to receive, then it should be their choice.

Am I the only one that learned that lesson? Or did I miss something, and was the lesson that it's ok to control peoples' lives so long as it's YOUR moral code that is followed?

If he'd slit his wrists, he would have been taken to a hospital and cared for against his will. This is different because it's a religious belief? Give me a break.

I'm all for the rights of 14-year-olds to do lots of things. Committing suicide isn't one of them. It's really disingenuous to imply that the belief that children should be able to say, voice their opinions, publish newspapers, or read what they like means that I should support their right to kill themselves if they wish. It's not even remotely equivalent.

No one would be arguing about this if the child was 9 years old (why? because at 9, a child's religous beliefs are solely the product of the parent, and not their own independent thoughts). Or, if the person was 30 (bythat time you've had enough time to be exposed to different ideas and form independent beliefs about religion). So, we must agree that there is a point where someone can choose to have their religious beliefs influence whether they live or die (somewhere between 9 and 30, obviously would be different for each individual).

Some people might see 14 as a gray area, but I (and many on this thread) think that at that point, most kids' relgious beliefs are still at least 50% influenced by their parents. Therefore, it is not really the child that's making the choice.

So Doctors don't have the right to save lives, and Pharmacists have the right to withhold medication to kill (a potential fetus). Are we just taking decision making out of the hands of medical experts here? Why even go to the doctor.

Does anyone know the age requirement for a DNR (do not resuscitate) order?

Oh, that's right, he died for being ignorant of medicinal science.

That's okay; I'm not selling it. The judge -- who is, by the way, is the appointed agent for deciding which risks we "as a society" are willing to accept -- already made the decision.

And there's no such thing as certain death. Doctors told my dad he'd be dead in six months -- every six months for 5 years.

But don't strain yourself trying to think too hard about it, Irena. Irrational beliefs you agree with are moral choices, moral choices made by people you don't agree with are irrational superstitions. Carry on.

The judge has to interpret existing law. This is a legislative issue.

you can blame religion, you can blame the parents (who were where before-hand), you can blame the aunt, you can blame current laws, you can blame society, and on and on.

but this is about legal choices.

There has to be some give and take here. As Judah pointed out, what about teenage girls who want abortions? And as other commenters have pointed out, what about kids diagnosed with terminal illnesses? I'll bet, especially since they're not the ones experiencing any pain, parents are perfectly happy to force their terminally ill children into debilitating treatment, even when there's no hope of those treatments working. There has to be a mechanism, such as the courts, for a kid to refuse that shit.

Besides, if the biological parents hadn't opposed the kid's right to deny medical treatment, we wouldn't have heard anything about this.

Judges are there to decide both questions of fact and law, in this case the judge would be asked to find if the child was mature enough to make the decision for himself. If the judge has any sense they wouldn't make it a hard standard that any child of 14 is automatically competent to make these decisions, but would rather look to the specific context of this child's situation and capabilities.

While i am troubled by the indoctrination of children by religions, allowing them freedom to refuse medical treatment is the only way i know that i would be able to have freedom to refuse treatment at a point of my own choosing.

we have to trust the judgment of the judge, otherwise we are no better than the fundies who flipped out about the Schaivo matter, which even in the jurisdiction that congress choose, the judge(s) decided that she could go off the feeding tubes

Yeah, bummer. I was really hoping we could be BFFs so that you would acknowledge the points I put forward. Because god knows you can't expect a Slogger to concede a point unless it's advanced by someone they like.

Fuck sake.

I understand everything in the religion aspect on this, seeing I grew up this way, but I still feel awful about his death.

I guess what I am trying to say is let people believe what they believe and if they want to kill their own over what they believe, so be it.

Schaivo had no hope of ever recovering, by any measure, ever. None. That was key to the ruling.

This 14 year old boy probably wasn't being brave or piously standing by his beliefs. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think so. His life would have sucked if he took the treatment, and he knew it. His aunt, church, and entire peer group would have regarded him as an abomination unto God. Can you imagine having a terminal illness and having that kind of social pressure ala mode?

I don't know what you mean by that last paragraph, but I interpreted, "We trusted the FL supreme court judges to starve that breathing corpse to death, so this other (lower-court-holding) judge must be correct in letting a child endanger his life. We owe the judge the benefit of the doubt."

If I misinterpreted your words, I'm sorry. Clarify please.

I disagree with you. We should absolutely question judge's decisions. It doesn't make us nutjobs to disagree. We all have that right, even the crazies.

If everyone hates the idea of teenager denying medical treatment for any reason, including deeply-held religious beliefs, demand that it constitutes as child endangerment. It is a legislative issue.

>_>

I agree that the judge's role here is to make the determination of whether the child is mature enough to freely make the decision himself. The age at which children would be mature enough to make this decision would vary based on the child.

But, I think that there is a distribution of some sort here that needs to be considered (what percentage of children at diferent ages would be capable of making this decision). At 6, 0% of kids can make the decision for themselves. At 10-11, maybe 1%. At 14? I think everyone here would give a different answer, but I personally believe that it is a very small number.

Was this kid one of the few that could do so? I don't know. But, somehow I doubt it, given the nature of the JW community. They are not exactly know for encouraging children to explore other theologies or ways of thinking about religion or god. Until a child has been given the space and freedom to do so, have they really "chosen" their beliefs?

This issue is that he was a child, and at what point should a child have the right to make this decision for himself.

But, I guess it's more fun to call us hypocrites and say we hate his "freedoms".

I would just hold off judgment until i see the context. and that is the comparison i was making to schaivo, Congress was interfering legislatively when they didn't have all of the specific context that the courts had.

and i don't think it should be a matter for the legislature even generally, statutes are a very blunt tool, with them we would have a strict age limit, like voting or driving that may or may not fit each individual's situation. hopefully a judge would be able to view the context of the situation and more accurately determine what the kid's capabilities are

Darwin wins again.

Just like those parents that killed their infant because they thought grass milk was sufficient nourishment? No, this is not some weird experimental treatment-the kid was given a pretty good chance of surviving. In this case, the guardian did what was wrong for the welfare of the child.

And what if the situation was reversed? What if the aunt (his legal guardian) didn't want him to receive the treatment, but he did want it. Would he be old enough then to make that decision for himself? Legally, guardians, whether biological parents or not, make all the medical decisions for minors, except when kids can make a good case otherwise in a court of law. Nothing about that should change.

1: As a YOUNG man at the tender age of 30 I am deeply saddened by the death of this boy. Raised as a Jehovah's Witness I was fully in line with their beliefs until the age of about 18. I have little doubt that I would not also of made the same decision that YOUNG Dennis did. Though hind-sight gives me an insight that (appears to me) none of you have.

2: No right-wing agenda... no militia.. and no ridiculous Darwinism b.s. All of this gives way too much credit to the Witness's from your uninformed (again) b.s.

3: The reason I would of taken the same path as this poor boy is because he believed that the end is near. That at any moment... at any day, and most likely as a thief in the night ( I believe that comes from Matthew) god is going to pull the plug on the world as we know it... He choose making god happy (with a reward of everlasting life as a perfect and healthy human being), and so would of I.

4: That would not be my answer now.

5: My aggravation with the comments here is the underestimation and lack of understanding of the problem. The aunt handled the situation as any other Witness would have, and I'm sure that the boy was convinced that Jehovah would bring him back to life soon, and be rewarded for his blind faith. This is not a political right wing anti-this or anti-that crap. It is a borderline cult that exists right below the radar, and is far less transparent than some stupid born again Christian Evangelical gay hating fucks. It is like the Mafia, you don't except it unless you are ready to face the consequences.

6: The devil is six, man is five, and god is seven! I could go on forever, but I have already wasted too much time on you blow hards anyway... So fuck off!

Sincerely,
X_JW

it does seem, however, that the law was followed: the judge thought the boy understood, the legal guardian approved.

the complaint would then be that the judge was wrong about the boy.

it is sad to thing that the boy had information that is "religious" -- thus wrong in many eyes save his and his social cirlce's -- influencing his choice. but any adult could fall into that same situation, so once again, the argument is only about whether this boy was mature enough to make a life and death decision.