The federal ”Baby Doe” rule was the first effort made by the US government to get involved in the treatment options for newborns born with serious congenital defects. The case started in 1982 in Bloomington, Indiana in concerns to an infant baby who went by the name of Doe. The topic of impaired infants born with severe congenital defects gained national attention in April of 1982 when baby Doe was born. Baby Doe was born with Down Syndrome a genetic condition that delays child development and he was also born with an abnormal assembly of the trachea and esophagus. Baby Doe needed immediate surgery to mend the birth defects. With the guidance of their physician, Baby Does’ parents chose to withhold medical care and surgery due to the conclusion still leaving the child with severe retardation. “Officials at the hospital had the Indiana Juvenile Courts appoint a guardian to determine whether or not to perform the surgery. The court finally ruled in favor of the parents and upheld their right to informed medical decision” (Resnik, 2011). Because of the decision made to withhold surgery and medical care, Baby Doe died five days later of dehydration and pneumonia. The law was signed by President Ronald Regan on October 9th 1984 after a long legal battle. The law was set to aid in the child abuse prevention and treatment act. Ever since the law was signed, the “Baby Doe” rules have had a large impact on parents’ rights to make medical decisions for their children. “Under the Baby Doe regulations of 1984, withholding neonatal intensive care on the basis of handicap or, in the case of extremely premature infants, increased risk of handicap was deemed to be discrimination and a violation of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973” (Tyson, 2013). ... ... middle of paper ... ...he three exception categories, the parents cannot express their concerns. If the child doesn’t fit into one of the three categories the parents don’t have any other choices but to go forward with treatment. Some parents struggle knowing they will have to care for a disabled child for the rest of their lives and some parents are not prepared to take on that role. I don’t feel that withholding care is the answer, but I also don’t believe that forcing the parents to take on such a big responsibility is the answer either. People get put into situations that they are not prepared and they don’t care for the child like they should. In the end the child is the one who suffers. This subject will always be controversial with the world that we live in today. I am thankful for the Federal “Baby Doe”rules and I am sure a lot of newborns lives have been spared because of it.
One of the errors committed by the caseworker was that they failed to get an informed consent from Gabriel’s mother or a judge. Although his mother did signed off for Gabriel to receive treatments, it would be safe to say that his mother was
I once did not realize the ethics of medical care of an infant, let alone one that is ill in the NICU. Baby Dylan was at 23 weeks gestation when mother Jennifer and father Kevin gave birth to him. He seemed like a little human eager to live but even the latest advances in medicine were unable to keep him alive. I believe that the parents ended up making the correct decision for baby Dylan. If he ended up being a “keeper” he still could have had severe neurological and respiratory problems for the rest of his life.
To me, the issue was two sided because I could understand if the parents did not believe or feel medicine could be helpful that forcing them could make matters worse for the child. As a professional, I can see the importance of treatment. Taking a child from the parents, I feel should be a worse case scenario. I felt that taking a child from a parent due to health
In Grand Rapids, Michigan, at the Metropolitan Hospital, there are two new, difficult cases that have raised a few bioethical issues. The first case is that of Roosevelt Dawson; the patient has a disease that makes him unable to use his arms and legs, and is unable to breathe on his own. Although he is not dying, his current paralyzed state alters his life completely. In the second case, the patient is a ten-month-old unnamed baby girl. She was born without arms or legs, and is unable to be nourished orally due to anomalies of the mouth. Their cases are similar because neither patient has the ability to use their arms or legs, and both are unable to breathe or take nourishment orally on their own; Dawson’s competence being affected by his disease, whereas the baby’s competence is due to her young age and underdevelopment. Another similarity is that in both cases, the topic of assisted suicide comes up. Dawson chose to take his life with the help of Dr. Jack Kevorkian, even though his disease was not terminal and the mother of the baby chose to stop nourishment, ultimately killing the baby, even though there
Alexandra Sakellariou writes an article about a mother Rachel who gave up her baby because she wasn’t ready to raise a child. “I knew there was no way I could raise a baby as I’d been living on my own since I was 16 and had no family support.” (Sakellariou). Here Rachel explains that when she got pregnant she was still a child herself and living on her own with no help which isn’t the right situation in which anyone should raise a child. Not everyone who gets pregnant is ready to raise a child on their own and not everyone is able to take on that great responsibility that a child brings. So every parent should care for their child unless it is too inconvenient like if they’re not receiving any family support or if they’re not ready to take care of a child. Ashlee Amraen was in a similar situation to Rachel when she got pregnant with her twin boys, “I want my twins to have a stable and healthy, two parent home and I can’t do that right now in life. They deserve so much better than what I can give them.” (Amraen). Amraen states that when she got pregnant she wanted her children to grow up in an ideal home, a home that she couldn’t provide for them at this time. Children deserve to grow up in homes that are
"Women are very vulnerable when they deliver a child," said state Rep. E. Childers, among the handful of legislators who opposed the bill. "I am concerned that there will be too many people in the wings to push her to give it up for adoption. They may be taken advantage of."
This bill is able to ban ASFA law, which required foster care agencies to terminate parental legal rights for children who are in Foster Care for 15 out of the last 22 months. This bill was problematic because the average sentence period in New York’s prisons for women is 36 months. Thus, the new Expanded Discretion Bill allows foster care agencies to abstain from terminating legal rights of parents who are in prison, both mothers and father. This law places New York in the top for child welfare policies that recognizes the challenges phased by families separated by incarceration.
It is clear that modern medicine is capable of rescuing patients from near death. Whether the patient wants to be rescued may be their own legal right but is an ethical dilemma for the medical community. We also observe the denial of proper treatment from those who are bound by the religious views of their employment. An adult with a clear state of mind should have the right to accept or deny treatment, while the physician should not have the right to deny life-saving treatment. It is clear that when a child’s life is endangered, treatment will be given even against the will of the provider. This is a field that will continue to face ethical decisions and ensuing cases against the medical community for their choice to either uphold or deny their patients choice.
Explanation of both sides as to why it is or is not justifiable for reasons other than for the medical intervention to have a child live a healthier life.
In 1982, there was a legal case called "Baby Doe." The parents of a Down Syndrome child refused to grant permission for an operation, which would save the baby's life, instead, they condemned their child to death by starvation. The parents admitted that their intention was to kill their child, and the courts ruled that the parents have a legal right to deliberately cause their child's death provided that two conditions are met: one, the child must be a newborn baby, and two, the child must be handicapped. With modern medical technology, this condition could have been corrected with relatively simple surgery (Lyon). Perhaps they killed their child because he would never be an honor student, would never become a doctor or a lawyer.
There was a case in Texas regarding a 19-month old child. She fell into her family’s pool but was able to be revived. Unfortunately, she was without oxygen for over an hour and this caused her to be blind, deaf and unable to move. Ultimately, the family came to the conclusion that they couldn’t allow her to live like this and the hospital’s ethics committee agreed. Then the hard part, how do you kill a child? Unfortunately in the state of Texas, withholding nutrition and hydration is the only option anyone has. This poor baby was forced to starve to death for almost nine days because of politics before inevitably dying. How is that humane? So in this case we see that though they were able to terminate her life, they were not able to use the most humane method to end he...
As a result, when she was told, Mrs. Roth said, “We cannot let it live, for her sake and ours.” On the day she left the hospital with the child, Mrs. Roth mixed a lethal dose of a tranquilizing drug with the baby’s formula and fed it to her. The child died that evening. Mrs. Roth and her husband were charged with infanticide. During Court Mrs. Roth admitted to the killing but said she had done the right thing. “I know I could not let my baby live like that,” she said. “If only she had been mentally abnormal, she would not have known her fate. But she had a normal brain. She would have known. Placing her in an institution might have helped me, but it wouldn’t have helped her.” The jury, found Mrs. Roth and her husband guilty of the charge.
...d October 31, 1978 by Congress. It was an amended addition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 stating women who are pregnant are to be treated equally to others. “on the basis of pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions shall be treated the same for all employment-related purposes” (EEOC, 2013).
The advocates against abortion still say, what about the radical cases? If a single mother living in poverty is pregnant, and she cannot provide for her baby, should it still be born? If a child with a disability is to be born, should the parents be allowed to kill/abort the child out of pity? I...
Imagine you or one of your family members being in a persistent vegetative state, a conduction in which a medical patient is completely unresponsive to physical and psychological stimuli and shows no sign of high brain function, being kept alive only by medical intervention. That would be more than difficult to imagine, but for the Cruzan’s family it was a reality. Nancy Cruzan was in a car accident, which resulted in massive injuries. Nancy was in an unconscious state and very unresponsive in daily activities. She was in a vegetable state with an implanted feeding tube in her stomach. As years passed by the family decided they wanted the feeding tube to be removed in order for Nancy to get the peace she needed. The Supreme Court didn’t quite agree with the family’s decision of removal of the feeding tube. The Supreme Court seized the family’s upright decision to remove the feeding tube from Nancy Cruzan because her family knows what is better for her rather than someone who knows almost nothing about her.