A Blurred Line

It hit me the other day that sometimes peoples' views change based on what is convenient. While I think he is back home now, last week there was practically a nation-wide manhunt for the 13 year old boy who had reportedly left the country with his mother to avoid chemotherapy.

It occurred to me that a 13 year old girl could have an abortion, probably without her parents being notified, and that is supported. It is a woman's right to choose what happens to her body and all that stuff.

What is the difference? Chemotherapy and abortions are both, strictly speaking, medical procedures. Are 13 year old females so much more mature that they can make decisions about their bodies and what happens to them than a 13 year old male? Is it fine that the parents don't know what is going on in one case but are fully supportive of the child in the other and that is somehow wrong?

I know personally a family that buried their son on New Year's Eve 2008. I think he was 21. Three years of chemo and radiation for leukemia had so weakened his lungs that even though his leukemia was in remission - after the second or third bone marrow transplant - he died from the treatments.

It is my understanding that this young man who refused the treatments knew of a similar case. He might have been actually making an informed decision about his health and his life and how he wanted to spend his days.

So where is the line? How can the argument be made on one side that a child can make a decision about her own body but another child of the same age cannot? How can it be acceptable for one side to make this type of decision on her own, no parental guidance, but the support of the parents in the other case bears no weight?

It just seems convoluted to me. It seems like the argument that we have the right to choose what happens to our bodies is dependent on whether the decision agrees with the national "conventional wisdom".

I guess I'm pretty white and black. A right is a right is a right. Doesn't matter. If it applies to one it must apply to all - consistently, evenly, fairly, uniformly.

End of story.