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Harm is all you need? Best interests and disputes about parental decision-making
A growing number of bioethics papers endorse the harm threshold when judging whether to override parental decisions. Among other claims, these papers argue that the harm threshold is easily understood by lay and professional audiences and correctly conforms to societal expectations of parents in reg...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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BMJ Publishing Group
2016
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4752625/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26401048 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/medethics-2015-102893 |
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author | Birchley, Giles |
author_facet | Birchley, Giles |
author_sort | Birchley, Giles |
collection | PubMed |
description | A growing number of bioethics papers endorse the harm threshold when judging whether to override parental decisions. Among other claims, these papers argue that the harm threshold is easily understood by lay and professional audiences and correctly conforms to societal expectations of parents in regard to their children. English law contains a harm threshold which mediates the use of the best interests test in cases where a child may be removed from her parents. Using Diekema's seminal paper as an example, this paper explores the proposed workings of the harm threshold. I use examples from the practical use of the harm threshold in English law to argue that the harm threshold is an inadequate answer to the indeterminacy of the best interests test. I detail two criticisms: First, the harm standard has evaluative overtones and judges are loath to employ it where parental behaviour is misguided but they wish to treat parents sympathetically. Thus, by focusing only on ‘substandard’ parenting, harm is problematic where the parental attempts to benefit their child are misguided or wrong, such as in disputes about withdrawal of medical treatment. Second, when harm is used in genuine dilemmas, court judgments offer different answers to similar cases. This level of indeterminacy suggests that, in practice, the operation of the harm threshold would be indistinguishable from best interests. Since indeterminacy appears to be the greatest problem in elucidating what is best, bioethicists should concentrate on discovering the values that inform best interests. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4752625 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2016 |
publisher | BMJ Publishing Group |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-47526252016-02-21 Harm is all you need? Best interests and disputes about parental decision-making Birchley, Giles J Med Ethics Law, Ethics and Medicine A growing number of bioethics papers endorse the harm threshold when judging whether to override parental decisions. Among other claims, these papers argue that the harm threshold is easily understood by lay and professional audiences and correctly conforms to societal expectations of parents in regard to their children. English law contains a harm threshold which mediates the use of the best interests test in cases where a child may be removed from her parents. Using Diekema's seminal paper as an example, this paper explores the proposed workings of the harm threshold. I use examples from the practical use of the harm threshold in English law to argue that the harm threshold is an inadequate answer to the indeterminacy of the best interests test. I detail two criticisms: First, the harm standard has evaluative overtones and judges are loath to employ it where parental behaviour is misguided but they wish to treat parents sympathetically. Thus, by focusing only on ‘substandard’ parenting, harm is problematic where the parental attempts to benefit their child are misguided or wrong, such as in disputes about withdrawal of medical treatment. Second, when harm is used in genuine dilemmas, court judgments offer different answers to similar cases. This level of indeterminacy suggests that, in practice, the operation of the harm threshold would be indistinguishable from best interests. Since indeterminacy appears to be the greatest problem in elucidating what is best, bioethicists should concentrate on discovering the values that inform best interests. BMJ Publishing Group 2016-02 2015-09-23 /pmc/articles/PMC4752625/ /pubmed/26401048 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/medethics-2015-102893 Text en Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://www.bmj.com/company/products-services/rights-and-licensing/ This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt and build upon this work, for commercial use, provided the original work is properly cited. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
spellingShingle | Law, Ethics and Medicine Birchley, Giles Harm is all you need? Best interests and disputes about parental decision-making |
title | Harm is all you need? Best interests and disputes about parental decision-making |
title_full | Harm is all you need? Best interests and disputes about parental decision-making |
title_fullStr | Harm is all you need? Best interests and disputes about parental decision-making |
title_full_unstemmed | Harm is all you need? Best interests and disputes about parental decision-making |
title_short | Harm is all you need? Best interests and disputes about parental decision-making |
title_sort | harm is all you need? best interests and disputes about parental decision-making |
topic | Law, Ethics and Medicine |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4752625/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26401048 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/medethics-2015-102893 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT birchleygiles harmisallyouneedbestinterestsanddisputesaboutparentaldecisionmaking |