Adolescents ought to have the right to make autonomous medical choices

The affirmative relies on an individualistic view of rights. Their argument is that the adolescent alone is capable of making these decisions. Their view of how rights are distributed and how decisions are made misunderstand the way society works. Complete autonomy is a view from nowhere, a disembodied subject that denies the influence one’s identity and community has. Donnelly '14: Mary Donnelly, pf of medical law @ University College Cork, "Healthcare Decision-Making and the Law" Cambridge Law, Medicine and Ethics series, November 2014 Michael Sandel ...argues that the liberal subject is individualistic, ... ‘standing always at a certain distance from the interests it has’. Thus, the liberal subject is separate (and separable) from her views, beliefs and interests. These are, in a sense, something she can take off or put on. A consequence of this is that ‘[n]o commitment could grip me so deeply that I could not understand myself without it’. Sandel disputes this view of the subject on metaphysical grounds, arguing that ‘community describes not just what [members of society] have as fellow citizens but also what they are, not a relationship they choose (as in a voluntary association) but an attachment they discover, not merely an attribute but a constituent of identity’. Thus, the standard is respecting communal norms. Prefer this framework because: A - Frameworks need to account for the socially embodied nature of the subject and it’s impacts on moral agency. Donnelly 2: Traditional conceptions of autonomy accord little significance to the embodied nature of the subject. Yet, all agents are essentially embodied. ... from a feminist perspective , ... ‘[m]enstruation, pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding, for example, are not activities in which participation can be chosen or rejected in the same way that, for example, purchasing a book, deciding to practice the piano, or building a bookshelf are chosen or rejected’ . Failure to recognise the patient as embodied also leads to a failure to appreciate the potentially coercive impact of illness on agency. B - Only through understanding the society around us can we come to understand notions of autonomy and agency. Donnelly 3: Feminist theorists also identify the role of connection in the creation of the self, drawing especially on the role played by conditions of dependency which are inevitable aspects of childhood in the creation of one’s moral personality. ... ‘our understanding of personality relates to its genesis, and, for us, that is in the conditions of biological life, in which one generation nurtures its successor generation, preparing it to take its place’. ... we are who we are because of where we come from; we are inevitably ‘socially embedded’. Recognising this has consequences for the role of agency within liberal conceptions of autonomy. My argument is that affirming is a violation of societal norms in terms of medical decision making, and that negating offers the best avenue of upholding them. First, affirming is a violation of the familial social health norms. Barina and Bishop: Rachelle and Jeffrey P, Saint Louis University, "Maturing the Minor, Marginalizing the Family: On the Social Construction of the Mature Minor," Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, 38: 300– 314, 2013 policy recommendations ... fail to recognize that the meaning of the body is founded in these sorts of familial practices and experiences of the family. Instead, the recommendations focus on consequences to individuals and to the state. This focus on consequences becomes a justification to undermine the normal familial communication of sexual mores, eroding the contextualizing function and foundational ground played by the family. Only by negating can we support familial norms and support the society. Barina and Bishop 2: Instead of presuming that minors should be emancipated in the context of reproductive health, we are arguing for a strong presumption against the provision of contraception/ abortion/EC without or against parental consent. ... The burden of proof should be on the medicolegal apparatus and individual practitioners to show the maturity of a particular minor and the necessity of providing contraception and EC without and against the consent of that minor’s parents/guardians. ... the sexuality of adolescents will not be cut off from its familial context or the realm where the care of the body finds its origins and its moral significance. And, prefer parent decision making. Parents, on average, make better decisions for their children than the adolescents. Cherry: Mark J. Cherry, pf of philosophy @ St. Edward's University, "Parental Authority and Pediatric Bioethical Decision Making" Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, 35:553-572, 2010 Parents have usually been identified, within rather broad side constraints, as the source of authority over their children and as the best judges of what constitutes the best interests for the family as a whole as well as the best interests of their minor children in areas of medical decision making. That is, parents themselves have usually been identified as the best judges for balancing costs and benefits, articulating values and inculcating virtues, to determine appropriate judgments for themselves and their children, and the family as a whole. … Furthermore, parents ought to have the right to raise their children as they see fit to. Will provides a plethora of warrants: Jonathan F. Will, JD from Pitt, “My god my choice: the mature minor Doctrine and adolescent refusal of Life-saving or sustaining medical Treatment based upon religious beliefs,” 22 J. Contemp. Health L. & Pol'y 233 2005-2006 Parents have a fundamental right, protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, to raise their children as they see fit. This right, grounded in both law and ethics, extends to inculcating religious values and making medical decisions … parents possess what a child lacks in maturity, experience, and capacity for judgment required for making life's difficult decisions. … natural bonds of affection lead parents to act in the best interests of their children. Buchanan and Brock offer four reasons in support of the position that parents are the proper surrogate decision-makers for their children: [First b]ecause ... parents ... care deeply about the welfare of their children and know them and their needs better than others do, they will be more concerned as well as better able than anyone else to ensure that the decisions made will serve their children's welfare ... [Second] parents must bear the consequences of treatment choices for their dependent children and so should have at least some control of those choices.... [Third] a right of parents ... [is] to raise their children according to the parents' own standards and values and to ... transmit those standards and values to their children.... [Fourth] the family is a valuable social institution, ... The family must have some significant freedom from oversight, control, and intrusion to achieve intimacy ... the intimate family is itself autonomous, and as such, "promotes the interests and goals of both the children and the parents." ... parents are in the best place to understand familial goals, and therefore, should retain final decision-making authority in continual pursuit of those goals. ... parents generally enjoy the right to make decisions on behalf of their children without state interference. The Supreme Court has stated that "[i]t is cardinal with us that the custody, care and nurture of the child reside first in the parents, whose primary function and freedom include preparation for obligations the state can neither supply nor hinder., … And now onto the aff case. His entire case revolves around the concept of adolescents being able to make competent decisions.First, the negative case comes first. It doesn't matter if the adolescents are competent if we should be preserving social norms and allowing the parents to be making the decisions. This means that if he has to be refuting my case to even access his offense. Second, don't trust competence studies. It's virtually impossible for a study to account for each change in person, change in context, and underlying emotions/stress, which all affect the decision making process. Michaud et al:Pierre-André Michaud, University of Lausanne, M.D., Robert Wm Blum, M.D., M.P.H., Ph.D., Johns Hopkins, Lazare Benaroyo, M.D., Ph.D., Jean Zermatten, Ph.D.and Valentina Baltag, M.D., M.Sc., Ph.D. “Assessing an Adolescent’s Capacity for Autonomous Decision-Making in Clinical Care?” Journal of Adolescent Health xxx (2015) 1e6 The appraisal of adolescents’ capacity is difficult for several reasons: First, the capacity to understand the short- and long-term aspects and consequences of a decision is highly dependent to the situation. … Second, the fact that the pace of cognitive and affective development varies from one adolescent to another makes the delimitation of age cutoffs for decisions regarding health very challenging. ... “competence varies by individual and by decision, … Third, there is increasing evidence from neurodevelopmental research that the capacity to foresee the consequences of a behavior or a decision is, under certain circumstances, hampered by the relatively slow growth and maturation of the prefrontal cortex and by the emotional context. As functional connectivity of the brain increases with age, increasing socioemotional maturity can be expected ,but adolescents react in a variable manner depending on their emotional state, ... If Carlos is asked about his future in the presence of his parents, his reasoning capacity may be hampered by the emotions linked with the conflicts with them. ... if his health care practitioner ... provide a safe and empathetic atmosphere and explore his thinking process calmly, they will promote optimal decisionmaking capacity, a climate of “cold cognition”, which improves competence ...