A young girl's fight against chemotherapy has caught the country's attention.
The Connecticut Supreme Court unanimously decided Cassandra Fortin, the 17-year-old girl from Windsor Locks, must undergo chemotherapy against her will.
The state sees it as a do-or-die scenario because Cassandra Fortin needs to undergo chemo or she will die from Hodgkin's Lymphoma.
But for a young girl and her mother, they said it's about a personal decision.
"She has lost her hair. She is sick,” Cassandra's mother Jackie Fortin said. “She has been in a hospital for four weeks."
Many people are now still trying to sort out how they fell about the unique case.
"I feel like you reach a point, maybe after adolescence - 14 or 15 - at which I don't think you need to control everything in your life but bodily autonomy is really important,” said Abigail Clayton, of New Haven.
"I think especially if the parent is on the side of the child, it should be a personal decision that she has to make herself,” Eleanor Woodward said.
Cassandra spoke out after writing an op-ed piece in the Hartford Courant where she explains why they were getting a second opinion about the chemo treatment. She stated "apparently, going for the second opinion and questioning doctors was considered ‘wasting time' and ‘not necessary."
“My mom was reported to the Department of Children and Families for medical neglect because we weren't meeting the doctors' time standard,” she stated in the op-ed piece.
Health law professor John Thomas at Quinnipiac School of Law said this medical question really directed the legal question.
"Hodgkin's Lymphoma is almost for certain a death sentence and the treatment is almost a certain cure,” Thomas said. “It's not experimental, not developmental.'
Thomas said the case could have gone a different direction if there were more facts supporting what's called the mature minor doctrine, which is the court's way of saying based on the circumstances, the juvenile is mature enough to make a decision like this.
"What really hurt the back part of her case, she went to court told the court and said she would take the treatment, went home and then ran away,” Thomas said.
Legal experts don't think that's realistic or practical for the case to make it to U.S. Supreme Court because it would take more than a year to get there. By then Cassandra will be 18 years old and make her own decision about her treatment.
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