Your task is to extract the thesis of an opinionated news article by selecting some of its text segments. The thesis is a summarization of what the author wants to persuade the reader of. Your answer should consist of segments of the given text. Note that you are not allowed to combine different sentences.
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Question: Connecticut Supreme Court saves teen's life. The Justices of the Connecticut Supreme Court took over parenting duties of a cancer-stricken teenager Thursday . In so doing, they surely saved her life . At the conclusion of oral arguments, the high court took just minutes to determined that state officials were right to take custody of the girl known in court documents only as "Cassandra C " and force her to undergo life-saving treatment . No thanks to her mother . Jackie Fortin had encouraged her 17-year-old daughter's desire to refuse chemotherapy . She naively pronounced,"my daughter is not going to die." As if wishing it could make it come true . Sadly, both mother and daughter were wrong . They were in denial . If they got their way , Cassandra would die . It was the equivalent of suicide . I wonder how her mother would feel then? Cassandra has advanced Hodgkin's lymphoma which attacks and consumes the body's immune system . Her doctors say chemotherapy treatment will give her an 85 percent chance of survival . Excellent odds . Yet, the teenager refused, saying she did not want to "poison" her body with chemo . How does that make sense to a rational mind? Let's employ Cassandra's own tortured terminology and logic . Does she not realize that her body is already being poisoned by the rapidly multiplying cancer in her lymph system? Untreated , it will quickly spread until it kills her . That is what her doctors predict . Reliable statistics from the National Cancer Institute prove they are right . Chemotherapy can save her . Chemicals are introduced into the diseased body to attack the cancer cells . You can call it a "poison" if you want , but a more accurate term is curative . Yes, the chemicals also harm other normal cells . To that extent they are a poison, of sorts, producing painful and unpleasant side effects . But once the body recovers and is free of the cancer cells, the chemicals are gone . Thus , if chemo is a poison , it is not normally a lethal one . The cancer which is ravaging Cassandra's body surely is . If , by using the term "poison," Cassandra means she does not want to endure the side effects of nausea, vomiting, hair loss and exhaustion cond , she is being myopic . The final stages of untreated lymphoma are far more extreme and painful . Cassandra's disdain for the treatment that will likely save her young life is, perhaps, the best evidence that she was not mature enough to make a wise and informed decision on her own . But then again, neither was her mother . Which is why the state of Connecticut stepped in . As an adult, Fortin, is presumed to be competent under the law to make decisions for her daughter, a minor . However ,  Fortin's aberrant judgment in rejecting the treatment that could save Cassandra's life and her concomitant belief that her daughter would somehow, miraculously, not succumb to an insidious, fatal illness... called that legal presumption into serious doubt . There is also evidence that Fortin ignored obvious signs of her daughter's malignant disease at an early stage, failed to seek prompt and continuing medical attention, and has been unduly influencing Cassandra's negative reaction to treatment . The court records suggest a domineering mother with an abiding distrust of medicine, and a daughter fearful of running afoul of her mother's wishes . To deny a child beneficial, life-sustaining treatment constitutes child neglect . States have a duty to protect children from abuse and neglect . Courts rarely hesitate to step in where a child's life is in danger . Thus , the state was correct to intervene and the lower court was equally correct to remove the mother as unfit . Fortunately, the Connecticut Supreme Court agreed and did the right thing . Time is on Cassandra's side . The fact that she is 9 months away from turning 18 years old may, in the end, have saved her life . It gave the high court an excuse to adhere strictly to the law as it relates to protecting minors . Those 9 months will also give doctors valuable time to complete her therapy and give her a new chance at a full and happy life . As for her mother, Jackie Fortin? She will have ample time to wrestle with her conscience .

Answer: The Justices of the Connecticut Supreme Court took over parenting duties of a cancer-stricken teenager Thursday In so doing, they surely saved her life


Question: The real American Sniper was a hate-filled killer. Why are simplistic patriots treating him as a hero? I have to confess : I was suckered by the trailer for American Sniper . It's a masterpiece of short-form tension - a confluence of sound and image so viscerally evocative it feels almost domineering . You cannot resist . You will be stressed out . You will feel . Or , as I believe I put it in a blog about the trailer , "Clint Eastwood's American Sniper trailer will ruin your pants." But however effective it is as a piece of cinema, even a cursory look into the film's backstory - and particularly the public reaction to its release - raises disturbing questions about which stories we choose to codify into truth, and whose, and why, and the messy social costs of transmogrifying real life into entertainment . Chris Kyle, a US navy Seal from Texas, was deployed to Iraq in 2003 and claimed to have killed more than 255 people during his six-year military career . In his memoir, Kyle reportedly described killing as "fun", something he "loved" ; he was unwavering in his belief that everyone he shot was a "bad guy" . "I hate the damn savages," he wrote . "I couldn't give a flying fuck about the Iraqis." He bragged about murdering looters during Hurricane Katrina , though that was never substantiated . He was murdered in 2013 at a Texas gun range by a 25-year-old veteran reportedly suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder . However we diverge politically, I have enough faith in Eastwood's artistry and intellect to trust that he is not a black-and-white ideologue - or, at least, that he knows that the limitations of such a worldview would make for an extremely dull movie . But the same can't be said for Eastwood's subject, or, as response to the film has demonstrated, many of his fans . As Laura Miller wrote in Salon:"In Kyle's version of the Iraq war, the parties consisted of Americans, who are good by virtue of being American, and fanatic Muslims whose 'savage, despicable evil' led them to want to kill Americans simply because they are Christians." Adds Scott Foundas at Variety:"Chris Kyle saw the world in clearly demarcated terms of good and evil, and American Sniper suggests that such dichromatism may have been key to both his success and survival; on the battlefield, doubt is akin to death." Eastwood, on the other hand, Foundas says, "sees only shades of gray" , and American Sniper is a morally ambiguous, emotionally complex film . But there are a lot of Chris Kyles in the world , and the chasm between Eastwood's intent and his audience's reception touches on the old Chappelle's Show conundrum: a lot of white people laughed at Dave Chappelle's rapier racial satire for the wrong reasons, in ways that may have actually exacerbated stereotypes about black people in the minds of intellectual underachievers . Is that Chappelle's fault? Should he care? Likewise, much of the US right wing appears to have seized upon American Sniper with similarly shallow comprehension - treating it with the same unconsidered, rah-rah reverence that they would the national anthem or the flag itself . Only a few weeks into its release, the film has been flattened into a symbol to serve the interests of an ideology that, arguably, runs counter to the ethos of the film itself . How much, if at all, should Eastwood concern himself with fans who misunderstand and misuse his work? If he, intentionally or not, makes a hero out of Kyle- who, bare minimum, was a racist who took pleasure in dehumanising and killing brown people- is he responsible for validating racism, murder, and dehumanisation? Is he a propagandist if people use his work as propaganda? That question came to the fore last week on Twitter when several liberal journalists drew attention to Kyle's less Oscar-worthy statements . "Chris Kyle boasted of looting the apartments of Iraqi families in Fallujah," wrote author and former Daily Beast writer Max Blumenthal . "Kill every male you see," Rania Khalek quoted, calling Kyle an "American psycho" . Retaliation from the rightwing twittersphere was swift and violent, as Khalek documented in an exhaustive (and exhausting) post at Alternet . "Move your America hating ass to Iraq, let ISIS rape you then cut your cunt head off, fucking media whore muslim," wrote a rather unassuming-looking mom named Donna . "Rania, maybe we to take you ass overthere and give it to ISIS... Dumb bitch," offered a bearded man named Ronald , who enjoys either bass fishing or playing the bass (we may never know) . "Waterboarding is far from torture," explained an army pilot named Benjamin, all helpfulness . "I wouldn't mind giving you two a demonstration." The patriots go on, and on and on . They cannot believe what they are reading . They are rushing to the defence of not just Kyle, but their country, what their country means . They call for the rape or death of anyone ungrateful enough to criticise American hero Chris Kyle . Because Chris Kyle is good, and brown people are bad, and America is in danger, and Chris Kyle saved us . The attitude echoes what Miller articulated about Kyle in her Salon piece : "his steadfast imperviousness to any nuance, subtlety or ambiguity, and his lack of imagination and curiosity, seem particularly notable" . There is no room for the idea that Kyle might have been a good soldier but a bad guy; or a mediocre guy doing a difficult job badly; or a complex guy in a bad war who convinced himself he loved killing to cope with an impossible situation; or a straight-up serial killer exploiting an oppressive system that, yes, also employs lots of well-meaning, often impoverished, non-serial- killer people to do oppressive things over which they have no control . Or that Iraqis might be fully realised human beings with complex inner lives who find joy in food and sunshine and family, and anguish in the murders of their children . Or that you can support your country while thinking critically about its actions and its citizenry . Or that many truths can be true at once . Always meet your heroes .

Answer: In his memoir, Kyle reportedly described killing as "fun", something he "loved"


Question: My brain tumour will be removed this week, and I can be thankful. On the morning of my diagnosis I rush to get ready for work . It's 6am and I make a cup of black tea . As I carry it across the room , even though I'm being careful, I spill most of the boiling liquid, burning my hand . What's wrong with me, I think . By 10.30am my GP will telephone me at work with the results of a brain scan I had a couple of days before: an acoustic neuroma, sitting behind my right ear, 42mm in size - a brain tumour . The GP says that, so as not to delay things, he's faxing the referral to neurosurgery right away for urgent attention . Faxing? "Any change," he says,"go to A&E  ;". "Change? What does that mean?" I ask , becoming more alarmed with every word he says . "Have you been sick?" he asks . "No." "That's good." I feel sick . Diagnosis is a long, arduous path that is difficult to navigate . People get sick of you being sick and stop listening . To the untrained eye I look fine . But look closer and you'll see that I can't close my right eye , so it doesn't blink . My face is sagging on the right side , I get sores on the right-hand corner of my mouth due to the drool that manages to escape because of facial weakness on that side . Less obvious are the hidden symptoms . Right-sided facial numbness; overwhelming fatigue; tinnitus and reduced hearing in my right ear; a lack of co-ordination leading to an overpowering unsteadiness . All because I have this 42mm tumour that is taking up space in my head, slowly strangling the nerves relating to hearing, balance and facial sensation . I feel stupid for not noticing and not pursuing some of the symptoms when I first experienced them years ago . I listened to others too much when they told me it was normal and didn't listen to myself when I knew it was not . There is a certain amount of relief when you finally get a diagnosis, especially one so definitive . At the end of November, the moment I found out, work sent me home and there I have been ever since . Later that week I get a call from my bank . "Sorry for not calling," I say,"I've had a pretty rough week." I nearly tell them I've just found out I've got a brain tumour , but I catch myself . I realise how powerful that news is . It can get you out of almost anything . I've felt the power every time I've said it , but I still don't believe it's happening to me . My sister had breast cancer three years ago and it's taken all this time to stop the illness dominating her life . She has stopped obsessively searching for lumps, and says:"It's history, old news, like it happened to someone else." Will I ever acknowledge the reality of what's happening to me? I'm a 41-year- old woman, married, with no kids by choice . Children would mess up the vice- like grip my husband and I like to have on our lives . My morning commute takes an hour and a half so I read prolifically . I manage a small IT team at a prominent university . Apart from reading I love to cook . That's who I am: work, reading and cooking . Sounds boring, but I loved it . I haven't finished a book since being sent home from work . And don't ask me what's for dinner . I'll become dithery and confused, and eventually settle on cheese and crackers . After the relief of diagnosis, fear sets in . I know the snail's pace at which the NHS usually moves , so watching it jump into action induces panic in me . Within a couple of days, the hotshot neurosurgeon calls . He tells me it is a slow-growing tumour that I have probably had for years and that a few more weeks while they plan my operation won't make any difference . He tells me that as acoustic neuromas go, this one's big , but the good news is it's benign, it's not cancer , though it must come out and soon . Then the bad news- I will lose all hearing in that ear and one side of my face may be permanently paralysed from the operation . The news that I didn't have cancer didn't register ; I was too busy counting my losses . A few days later I went to a support group for people with brain tumours , where I met people with brain cancer . Their lumps were in places like the memory, speech or personality part of their brains , and for some the prognosis wasn't good . The phone call they got from their doctors was much worse than mine . I came away feeling grateful, devastatingly so . It sounds vain , but facial paralysis bothers me more than deafness . People will be able to see there is something wrong . I worry that they'll stop seeing me and see only a problem with my face . Not satisfied with taking half my hearing, the surgeon may take away my smile, my frown and that weird raised eyebrow look I've inherited from my dad . Not being able to express myself in full feels like I'm losing a big part of who I am . Admittedly, that is a woman who has worked in London for more than 20 years, trained in the art of remaining expressionless and speaking to no one . Now I smile or speak to strangers, luxuriating in my facial movements . I find much more to smile about nowadays . The internet tells me these types of tumours grow at a rate of about 1mm a year . If they have a spurt they might make it to 2mm a year . Has the tumour been growing all of my life? I think back to key moments : did I miss out on promotions due to the fatigue of a growing tumour? I did a degree part-time a few years ago and got a 2:1 . I now think my certificate should say 2:1 (with a brain tumour) . The morning after my diagnosis I was woken up by The Voice . Wake up, it said, there' s lots to do . It has been telling me what to do ever since , and so far it has never been wrong . We all have that voice , but the busyness of our lives causes it to fade into the background . Never has mine been so loud . Do yoga , it will improve your balance . Call your brother who you haven't spoken to in two years . Write a thank-you letter to the doctor who diagnosed you . Tell them you're scared before you have that brain scan . Write a will . My operation, a craniotomy, is planned for this coming Thursday . I have two main worries . The first is the horror of surrendering myself to it . I have to turn up at the hospital at 7.30am . They are trusting me to have eaten or drunk nothing for at least six hours . Like an inmate at a prison, I will have my possessions checked in . They will give me a gown to wear that is not my own . Then I will say goodbye to my husband, not knowing when I will see him again . Depending on the hotshot neurosurgeon's schedule I may have to wait a number of hours, empty-bellied and frightened . Eventually I will have one side of my head shaved before they put me to sleep . Don't make me do this voluntarily . Treat me like a wild animal running through the woods, take me out with a sedative dart when I am cooking or doing my favourite yoga pose . Then let me wake up when it is all over . Don't tell me I am brave . The people who choose to get involved with me are the brave ones . My husband, for picking me up every time I fall over when I lose my balance physically - and metaphorically . My mother, for clearing her schedule for as long as it takes to get me better . People like my yoga teacher , who didn't run a mile when I approached her for help, but instead restored some of my balance and made me feel strong . My second worry is something I've never been good at in my life . Now I must face it head-on - the unknown . The doctors can't tell me how long my hospital stay will be . Will they need to open me up again because my brain is bleeding? Will I have to have a shunt fitted because fluid isn't draining from my head? Will the surgeon sneeze and nick my facial nerve? Most suffering is in the worry . It means I have to live in the lacuna of uncertainty, embracing not knowing and carrying on , a new skill I practise daily . I know that if you take my life as a whole this is an interruption . This will end . I refuse to make it who I am, my identity . Rather ,  it is an experience, one that leaves its imprint on my body . It has brought my life into sharp focus and revealed what I have to be thankful for: people, strangers and intimates for their kindness and well wishing; my tenacity and determination for carrying me through; and as much as I'm trying to shake it off, my plan for creating a freezer-full of food to be eaten post-op . I am ready .

Answer:
Diagnosis is a long, arduous path that is difficult to navigate