Source: http://jlgh.org/Past-Issues/Volume-11---Issue-1/Minor-s-Rights-to-Make-Health-Care-Decisions.aspx
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 09:02:47+00:00

Document:
Editor’s Note: In the previous issue of the Journal, LGH Director and Senior Counsel Megan R. Browne, Esq., discussed the rights of minors to give consent for care and to seek certain specific types of care.1 The following article completes the discussion by focusing on issues of a minor’s rights to liberty and privacy under the U.S. Constitution and Pennsylvania Common Law, and by providing specific cases and court decisions that illustrate these principles.
The court specifically declined, stating “we choose not to adopt a “mature minor doctrine’ as a criminal defense . . .” After observing that other states have adopted the doctrine in the health care context, the Court observed that, in Pennsylvania, the Minors’ Consent Act and other statutory declarations of minors’ rights, which are described in the previous article,1 amount to the state legislature’s identification of “those minors who are deemed sufficiently mature to give consent to medical treatment.” Although the Court agreed that the statutory provisions “create specific exceptions to the general rule of incapacity” it declared they do not “show a legislative intent that any minor, upon the slightest showing, has capacity either to consent to or to refuse medical treatment in a life and death situation.” In refusing to adopt the mature-minor doctrine as a defense to the parents’ criminal charges, the court noted that the Superior Court of Pennsylvania “has held that ‘even if [the minor victims] were considered mature enough to freely exercise their religious beliefs, it does not dispel [the parents’] duty while the children are in their care, custody, and control to provide them with parental care, direction and sustenance.’ ”18 That comment indicates that, even if the Commonwealth’s top Court had recognized the mature-minor doctrine as a defense, the parents still would have had a legal duty to their child.
One can argue that this decision is the death-knell for the mature-minor doctrine as a matter of Pennsylvania’s common law. In fact, the concurring Justice in the case interpreted the majority’s decision in that manner.19 Indeed, the decision arguably indicates that, although the specific holding of the case was limited to the question presented to the Court regarding the doctrine as a criminal defense to specific charges, it is for the legislature to create any exceptions to the general rule that minors are incompetent to consent to medical treatment.
1. Browne, MR. Parents’ rights vs. children’s rights to make health care decisions. J Lanc Gen Hosp. 2016; 11: 116-121.
2. U.S. Const. amend. XIV § 1 (emphasis added).
3. See generally In re F.C. III, 2 A.3d 1201 (Pa. 2010).
5. See e.g., Anspach v. City of Phila., 503 F.3d 256, 263 (3d Cir. 2007).
8. Id. at 259-61; see also U.S. Const. amend. I (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . . .”).
9. 503 F.3d at 262, 265, 268-69.
10. Id. at 269 (quoting 35 P.S. § 10103).
12. Parents United for Better Schools, Inc. v. Sch. Dist. of Phila., 978 F. Supp. 197, 209 (E.D. Pa. 1997), aff’d 148 F.3d 260 (3d Cir. 1998).
13. Id. at 199, 209, 211.
14. See Commonwealth of Pa. v. Nixon, 761 A.2d 1151, 1153 (Pa. 2000).
15. In a 1972 decision, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania acknowledged specific instances in which older minors of sufficient maturity have been allowed to exercise certain rights or involvement in proceedings. See In re Green, 292 A.2d 387, 349-50 (Pa. 1972). However, those instances do not reflect a broad adoption of the mature-minor doctrine. In addition, in a more recent decision, the same court seemed to indicate a preference for the legislature to define minors’ rights instead of adopting the mature-minor doctrine as a matter of common law, as other states had done. See Nixon, 761 A.2d at 1153-55.
16. See id. at 1152.
17. Id. at 1152-53 (quoting 18 Pa. C.S.A. § 4304).
18. Id. at 1152, 1155; id. 1155 n.4 (quoting Commonwealth of Pa. v. Cottam, 616 A.2d 988 (Pa. Super. Ct. 1992)).
19. See id. at 1157 n. 1 (Cappy, J., concurring) (“It was after some deliberation of the majority’s discussion of the statutory exceptions to the general rule of minor incapacity . . .  that I concluded that the majority has evaluated the doctrine and determined that it will not be part of our common law under any circumstances.”).

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