McCarthy and Howard (2023) advocate for supported decision making for patients with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). Departing from the “mental prosthesis” model of supported deci...

Discussion of supported decision making has been dominated by legal scholars, philosophers, and advocates for persons with disabilities. Peterson et al.’s primary contribution is introducing...

Shavelson and colleagues (2023) describe how medical aid-in-dying laws in the United States prohibit assistance in administering aid-in-dying medication. This prohibition distinguishes aid in dying...

Pickering, Newton-Howes, and Young assert that the traditional view of decisional capacity, premised on assessing patients’ abilities to communicate, understand, appreciate,...

When mature minors face a decision with important consequences, such as whether to undergo a risky but potentially life-saving medical procedure, who should decide? Relying on liberal political theory’s account of the importance of decisional autonomy for adults, and given the scalar nature of the capacities needed to exercise decisional autonomy, I argue that mature minors with the requisite capacities and commitments have a right to decisional autonomy though they are not yet 18. I argue for this right using a (...) ‘balancing of interest’ account of rights: the interest mature minors have in decisional autonomy outweighs their parents’ interest in shaping their children as a means of ‘creative self-extension’. But I propose two limitations on this right: requests for waivers of the rule that one must be at least 18 to decide cannot be so numerous as to make adjudication impractical; and though a competent adult’s voluntary decision to refuse medical treatment should generally be respected, the state may reject a mature minor’s decision upon review by an indifferent judge of the minor’s capacities and reasons. The judge reviews not the substantive merits or prudence of the decision, but whether the decision promotes the interest in decisional autonomy, by asking among other things whether the decision is the minor’s own, is tethered to core commitments rather than based on arbitrary preferences, and could be regarded as reasonable to the minor’s ‘future self’. (shrink)

In their article, Navin, Brummett, and Wasserman (2022) advance the idea that there are qualitatively different types of decision-making capacity (DMC) for treatment refusals. Departing from what t...

Volume 20, Issue 8, August 2020, Page 88-90.

This article argues that supported decision making is ideal for people with dynamic cognitive and functional impairments that place them at the margins of autonomy. First, we argue that guardianship and similar surrogate decision-making frameworks may be inappropriate for people with dynamic impairments. Second, we provide a conceptual foundation for supported decision making for individuals with dynamic impairments, which integrates the social model of disability with relational accounts of autonomy. Third, we propose a three-step model that specifies the necessary conditions (...) of supported decision making: identifying domains for support; identifying kinds of supports; and reaching a mutually acceptable and formal agreement. Finally, we identify a series of challenges for supported decision making, provide preliminary responses, and highlight avenues for future bioethics research. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 8, August 2020, Page 90-92.

An attempt to reduce disability discrimination can do more harm than the ostensible discrimination itself. Such is the case with Shavelson et al.’s (2023) argument for equal access to medical aid i...