Don’t give very sick children a right to die – judge
CHILDREN suffering from a serious illness should not be given the right to die, Britain’s most senior family judge has warned.
Sir James Munby said he was ‘queasy’ at the prospect of courts allowing youngsters and teenagers to refuse life-saving treatment.
He said any judge tempted to approve a request from a child should ask: ‘What would they think five years down the line if they were still alive?’
Sir James, president of the Family Division of the High Court, argued during a debate on the legal rights of parents: ‘There is something that makes me queasy about the idea that if you have a 16-year-old who has the arguments and the capacity, then you let them take the decision that leads to their death.
‘ You have to ask, what would they think five years down the line if they were still alive?’ He said his views were based on two cases he acted in as an advocate in the 1990s and 2000s.
In one, a 15-year-old Jehovah’s Witness who suffered from leukaemia was ordered to undergo a life-saving blood transfusion.
Sir James said the procedure saved the boy’s life. However, the leukaemia recurred when he was 19. By then an adult, he was allowed to refuse the transfusion – and later died.
In 1997, a 17-year-old girl who was dying because of her anorexia tried to refuse radical treatment that would put her in plaster so she could not put her fingers down her throat and vomit after being fed. The judge ordered the treatment to go ahead and the girl was saved.
Five years later the judge said he saw the same girl – now a picture of health – taking part in a TV debate about a teenager refusing a heart transplant. ‘Her message was simple,’ said Sir James. ‘She said, thank God there was a judge who stopped me doing something silly.’
The girl, Chaye Parker, later spoke openly of her joy that High Court judges overruled her request.
‘One day you will thank God they didn’t listen to you,’ she said.
Chaye, pictured, added: ‘When I read about the case of this girl who wanted to die rather than have a heart transplant I saw the parallels. I just wanted to say to her, “Don’t give up. They are doing this in your best interests. They don’t want to hurt you, they want to help you”.
‘When you are 15 or 16 you have so much ahead of you and it would be a pity to give up so easily and never find out what is out there for you.’
She added: ‘ When the judge ordered that I should have treatment I resented it bitterly. I was so angry and frustrated because I felt, “Why should he say what should happen to my life?”
‘I kept running away. I felt that because I was a child I wasn’t allowed any rights. Now I am so glad. I wouldn’t be alive today if they had listened to me. I started getting better and enjoying life again and I realised what happened to me was the right thing.’
Sir James spoke in a debate on the rights of parents organised by the Family Justice Council, a judge-led body that brings together lawyers, social workers, doctors and academics.
Courts are bound by law to make rulings in the ‘best interests’ of children and young people under 18. However, under law established in adult cases, a court can decide that it is in someone’s best interests to die.