The Liberty Papers

In a stunning, tyrannical ruling, the Supreme Court of Connecticut has ruled that the Department of Children and Families has acted correctly in ruling that a 17 year old girl from Windsor Locks, identified in court documents as “Cassandra C”, was right in taking her from her home and forcing her to undergo chemotherapy for Hodgkin’s Lymphoma:

A 17-year-old Connecticut girl with a highly curable cancer is not mentally competent to make her own medical decisions and will continue to receive the chemotherapy treatments she’s battled to halt, the Connecticut Supreme Court ordered Thursday.

Chief Justice Chase T. Rogers ruled that the teen — listed only as Cassandra C. in legal records — is not mature by any standard.

That means Cassandra will remain at a Hartford hospital, in the temporary custody of child-welfare workers, and will receive her full course of chemotherapy to treat Hodgkin lymphoma. Doctors have said her odds at recovery are 80 to 85 percent with chemo, but that she will die without it.

(…)

In an interview Wednesday with NBC News, (Mother Jackie) Fortin denied pressuring her daughter into her decision to forgo chemo.

“I am not coercing her at all and that is what this is about, what they think I am doing,” Fortin said.

Cassandra simply does not want to be infused with “toxic” chemicals, Fortin added.

“My daughter does not want poison in her body. This is her constitutional right as a human being,” Fortin told NBC News. “She is almost 18. [Her birthday is nine months away]. If she was 18, I don’t think this would be an issue. She is not 10. She is over 17. She is very bright, very smart.”

In a Hartford Courant editorial, Cassandra told her own side of the story. Her description of what she went through when DCF got involved is surreal and gut-wrenching:

In December, a decision was made to hospitalize me. I didn’t know what was going to happen, but I did know I wasn’t going down without a fight.

I was admitted to the same room I’m in now, with someone sitting by my door 24/7. I could walk down the hallway as long as security was with me, but otherwise I couldn’t leave my room. I felt trapped.

After a week, they decided to force chemotherapy on me. I should have had the right to say no, but I didn’t. I was strapped to a bed by my wrists and ankles and sedated. I woke up in the recovery room with a port surgically placed in my chest. I was outraged and felt completely violated. My phone was taken away, the hospital phone was removed from my room and even the scissors I used for art were taken.

I have been locked in this hospital for a month, missing time from work, not being able to pay my bills. I couldn’t celebrate Christmas and New Year’s with my friends and family. I miss my cat and I miss fresh air. Having visitors is complicated, seeing my mom is limited, and I’ve not been able to see all of the people I’d like to. My friends are a major support; I need them. Finally, I was given an iPad. I can message my friends on Facebook, but it is nowhere near like calling a friend at night when I can’t sleep or hearing someone’s voice to cheer me up.

This experience has been a continuous nightmare. I want the right to make my medical decisions. It’s disgusting that I’m fighting for a right that I and anyone in my situation should already have. This is my life and my body, not DCF’s and not the state’s. I am a human — I should be able to decide if I do or don’t want chemotherapy. Whether I live 17 years or 100 years should not be anyone’s choice but mine.

Hodgkin’s Lymphoma is 80-85% curable with chemotherapy, but likely fatal without it.

I need to put forth some of my own perspective on Connecticut’s Department of Children and Families. Growing up poor in Connecticut, DCF was never, EVER the “good” guy. Even in cases where intervention to protect a child was warranted, DCF was viewed by everyone I knew as nothing short of terrorists. They were often called in by people who did not have a child’s best interests in mind – often by a former boyfriend/girlfriend of a single parent to “get back” at their ex – and were known to forcefully remove children from their houses and homes, putting them in a foster care environment that is comparable to prison, with all of the social issues (read: constant larceny, constant beatings, and constant sexual abuse by both peers and superiors) that entailed. The threat of DCF coming into my life was a constant for the child of a single mother that worked full time, and led to other consequences in my life that I will tell publicly at a later time. To put it bluntly: DCF was basically the Ministry of Love in our eyes, and rightly so.

Their actions in this case justify that mindset. They took a 17 year old girl out of her house – someone who can legally enlist to fight in a war – and blew away any idea of a mature minor¹, judging her too immature – in a state where the sexual age of consent is sixteen – to reject medication that they are forcing her to take by strapping her wrists and ankles to a bed, drugging her, and sticking a pipe in her chest to inject, while removing any form of communication with her family and friends. You know, for her own good. Just One Child™, and all that.

So she can enlist to get shot at in our (illegal) wars, she can have sex with whoever she wants, and she can work. But she can’t say that she doesn’t want something she’s called “poison” to be forcefully injected into her body by a state that is keeping her prisoner and abusing her Constitutional rights.

The mindset of the state – assuming anyone has any good intentions beyond simply exerting their authority – is likely that she will thank them in twenty to thirty years. This assumes that her fears of not being able to give birth, or that her fears of other side effects, do not come true. The quality of Cassandra’s medical care has been atrocious. Now, she would be right to distrust the state for any reason. She was terrorized by people who ostensibly have her best interests in mind, and has been routinely degraded in demeaned in the one way no one should be: by losing total bodily autonomy. She has had her dignity permanently destroyed, and I would not blame her, or her mother, for leaving the state of Connecticut forever, if they haven’t been put on some No Fly List for daring to cross a few bureaucrats.

This is pure fascism. Hateful, evil fascism. There is no other way to put it. And I am ashamed to say I live here right now.

^{1 – From a legal perspective, Cassandra, her mother, and her lawyers did not assert the mature minor doctrine, which asserts that minors as young as 15 can make their own medical choices without authorization or knowledge of their parents, though the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut mentioned it in their amicus brief (PDF). Connecticut is not one of the states that has codified a mature minor doctrine into law. DISCLOSURE: I am a member of the Connecticut ACLU.}