Adolescents ought to have the right to make autonomous medical choices.

To negate is defined as either to deny the truth of something or to make something invalid from Merriam-Webster. This means that the entire role of the negative is to refute the affirmative's case. This places the burden of proof on the affirmative. Prefer this interpretation for two reasons:First, the definition comes from a common, publicly available dictionary, making it the most predictable interpretation of the scope of the burdens. And predictability is key to fairness in debate because it's not fair to one side of another side is free to make up a bs interpretation or definition off the fly. Second, because it comes from a publically available dictionary and it's the first two definitions given it reflects common usage, meaning it's more likely to be the most accurate defintion, which is key to predictability and fairness. And fairness is important because if the debate is skewed in one direction it become impossible to weigh the round.This means that my sole job is to refute the AC. If I'm winning offense off of the affirmative case or have sufficient defense to refute the affirmative, then I win the round. The AC makes two basic claims. First, that Kant justifies giving adolescents rights and second, that adolescents are capable of making good decisions. STARTING WITH KANT:First is the idea of universizability. The problem with this is that you can never universalize a medical decision. Every situation is different among every different patient and every different home situation with differing emotional responses and cognitive development. Saying that there's a "one-size-fits-all" answer is just wrong. This takes out the entire possibility of Kant on the affirmative.Then, on this idea of "Reversability".First, this makes no sense. Just because I liked something as a kid doesn't mean that the thing I liked is a good thing or a moral thing. That's like saying that because I enjoyed bingeing on heroine and cocaine as a kid that snorting lines and shooting yourself up with lots of illegal drugs is perfectly okay for you which doesn't make any sense.Second, TURN: Reversability opens the door for infinite amounts of crime and violence and precludes any efforts to stop it. This opens up the door for murders and rapists to say that because they enjoy killing and raping to have it justified for others to do via reversability. This leads to a never-ending cycle of violence and death as more and more people murder and justify more and more people killing. Then, on the idea of the whole "Kingdom of Ends" argument.First, this relies on him winning his second contention in the first place. If he's saying that in order to make a rational choice under the Kingdom of ends you have to be competent, if I disprove that adolescents are competent (i.e. disprove his second contention), then his link to the Kingdom of Ends falls. Second, I meet the Kingdom of Ends. If the end is the health/safety of the adolescent then by not giving them the ability to screw up their own lives we best preserve the end within the adolescent. If we were using the adolescent to receive some other end, like better hospital bottom lines, then I'd be violating. But since I don't do that, then I meet. Third, if you don't buy that I meet, then it's impossible to determine what's actually the end in the Kingdom of Ends. There's no reason to believe that the end we arrive at isn't just a link to a different impact, or a consequence that brings about a different end altogether. This makes it impossible to determine if we're actually treating people as ends in themselves or using them as means to some unknown end. ON DECISION MAKING CAPABILITY:The entirety of this offense relies primarily on Piaget's theory of cognitive development. But TURN this against him. The formal operational stage just begins at 12 years old, and isn't fully developed until adulthood. This means that adolescents are still not as capable of making decisions under Piaget's theory as adults are, which means that they're more prone to making bad decisions. But on the entire concept of decision making as a whole.First, TURN: Brain studies show that adolescents are horrible decision makers who act impusively rather than rationally and tend to be more violent and lack the ability to think long-term. Barina and Bishop '13: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 "adolescents, whose frontal lobes are not fully developed, are known to have more impulsivity in making decisions. ... adolescents tend to assess threat–safety scenarios very differently. Lau et al. have attributed these differences to ... lack of maturity in the subcortical and prefrontal regions of the brains of adolescents. Adolescents ... show higher tendencies toward violence and self-destructive behaviors, ... grounded in the immaturity of the prefrontal cortex of adolescent brains. Adults assess outcomes very differently ... For adolescents, the “subcortical systems will win out (accelerator) over control systems (brakes) given their maturity relative to the prefrontal control systems” ..." Second, TURN: adolescents lack the ability to control themselves and let emotions guide their decisions rather than rationality. Steinberg '13:Laurence Steinberg (PhD, Department of Psychology, Temple University). “Does Recent Research on Adolescent Brain Development Inform the Mature Minor Doctrine?” Oxford University Press. 2013. "Adolescence is also a time of important changes in how the brain works, as revealed in studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging ... First, over the course of adolescence and into early adulthood, there is a strengthening of activity in brain systems involving self-regulation ... During tasks that require selfcontrol, adults employ a wider network of brain regions than do adolescents, which may make selfcontrol easier, by distributing the work across multiple areas of the brain rather than overtaxing a smaller number of regions. Second, there are important changes during adolescence in the way the brain responds to rewards ... Heightened sensitivity to anticipated rewards motivates adolescents to engage in acts, even risky acts, when the potential for pleasure is high, such as unprotected sex, fast driving, or experimentation with drugs. This hypersensitivity to reward is particularly pronounced when adolescents are with their friends ... A third change in brain function over the course of adolescence involves increases in the simultaneous involvement of multiple brain regions in response to arousing stimuli, like pictures of angry or terrified faces ... Before adulthood, there is less cross-talk between the brain systems that regulate rational decision-making and those that regulate emotional arousal. During adolescence, very strong feelings are less likely to be modulated by the involvement of brain regions involved in impulse control, planning ahead, and comparing the costs and benefits of alternative courses of action. This is one reason that susceptibility to peer pressure declines as adolescents grow into adulthood; as they mature, individuals become better able to put the brakes on an impulse that is aroused by their friends ..." Third, TURN: MRI scans show that the adolescent brain is still developing and isn't as rational as adult minds are - adolescents lack the same rationality that distinguishes adults from adolescents. Casey et al.:BJ, Sarah Getz, Sackler Institute @ Cornell, Adriana Galvan, pf of psychology @ UCLA, "The adolescent brain," Developmental Review 28 (2008) 62–77 "Several studies have used structural MRI to map the anatomical course of normal brain development ... Although total brain size is approximately 90% of its adult size by age six, the gray and white matter subcomponents of the brain continue to undergo dynamic changes throughout adolescence ... This pattern is consistent with nonhuman primate and human postmortem studies showing that the prefrontal cortex is one of the last brain regions to mature ..." And, educating them of the medical choices doesn't solve for the lack of competency - their lack of rationality and impulsivity win out in the end. Casey et al. 2: "We have developed a neurobiological model of adolescent development within this framework that builds on rodent models ... and recent imaging studies of adolescence ... This perspective provides a basis for nonlinear shifts in behavior across development, due to earlier maturation of this limbic relative to less mature top-down prefrontal control region ... the model reconciles the contradiction of health statistics of risky behavior during adolescence, with the astute observation by Reyna and Farley (2006) that adolescents are able to reason and understand risks of behaviors in which they engage. According to our model, in emotionally salient situations, the limbic system will win over control systems given its maturity relative to the prefrontal control system. Evidence from behavioral and human imaging studies to support this model are provided in the context of actions in rewarding and emotional contexts ... teenagers may be at greater risk for making suboptimal decisions leading to poorer long-term outcomes ..." CONCLUSION:I'm showing how Kant's philosophy is insufficient to affirm adolescents the right to autonomy. Furthermore, I'm showing you how that even if Kant is right, it's reliant on adolescents being rational actors before we can even look to Kant for offense. I'm definitively showing how adolescents are anything but rational actors.