A 17-year-old girl battling with cancer has become a subject of a controversial court case in Connecticut for one reason: she didn't want to go through chemotherapy. Did she have her way?
The answer is no. The Supreme Court has just ruled on Thursday, January 8, that the state is not violating the girl's right when it interfered with her treatment.
The teen who's only known in the news as Cassandra is suffering from a Hodgkin's lymphoma that is high risk and therefore needs chemotherapy immediately. By doing so, according to her doctors, she has an 85% survival rate.
Diagnosed in September, she received her first doses of chemotherapy in a local hospital. However, when she was allowed to go home by November, she never came back but instead went away for a week.
Although Cassandra is aware that she might die if she didn't receive any chemotherapy-her doctors believe that she might die within 2 years without it-she preferred to prioritize quality of life and that she considered the drugs to be poison and toxic.
Together with her mother, Jackie Fortin, they were trying to seek alternative treatments. Right now, the mother-daughter pair is separated after child welfare took Cassandra into their custody while she's going on with her 6-month treatment, which only devastated her single mother. Cassandra is her only child, and this is the only time they've been away for a very long time. Cassandra resumed her treatment on December 17 beginning with adding a port on her chest.
Nevertheless, the family, through their lawyer, is thinking of appealing the judgment by compelling the state to adopt the mature minority doctrine, which recognizes the right of a teen below 18 years old to make a personal decision, especially since Cassandra is turning 18.