Connecticut Court Rules Against Teen Who Didn’t Want Chemo

BY PAT EATON-ROBB
Associated Press

HARTFORD, Conn. — The Connecticut Supreme Court has ruled that state officials aren’t violating the rights of a 17-year-old girl by forcing her to undergo cancer chemotherapy she doesn’t want.

Justices ruled Thursday in the case of the girl known in court documents only as Cassandra C., who will be free to make her own medical decisions when she turns 18 in September.

The case centered on whether the girl is mature enough to make her own decisions about how to treat her Hodgkin lymphoma, which she was diagnosed with in September. Her mother agreed with her wishes not to receive chemotherapy.

Doctors said chemotherapy would give her an 85 percent chance of survival, but without it she could die.

The girl is in state custody and receiving treatment at a hospital.