Opinion Source Information:
When parents refuse treatment for children: A legal and ethical Q&A
Cooper: Jeff, if they continue to refuse treatment and this boy dies, god forbid, would the parents be charged?
Toobin: They could be. Oftentimes the prosecutors exercise their discretion and say, look, they’ve lost a child. They’ve suffered enough. But the point is not to, you know, prosecute later. It’s to save the kid now. That’s the focus of everybody’s effort. And what makes this case so excruciating is that you have a real cure here. 90-plus percent, and you have a 0% chance for the others. As art was saying, this one is a particularly easy case. Sometimes you have cases where there’s only a 10% chance of saving the child. And the parents just want to take the kid home and, you know, do hospice care. That’s an understandable situation under circumstances. This is not. This is, as far as I’m concerned, just child abuse.