Minor Patients' Autonomy. Recognizing the Dignity to Create Capabilities

Ramon Llull Journal of Applied Ethics 6 (6):53-66 (2015)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

The current health legislation recognizes minors’ capacity to make decisions or, at least, to take part in those that affect them, according to their age and maturity. But this capacity is not promoted. Capacitating minors to make their own decisions is still a challenge, because it requires something that today is not happening: autonomy has to be understood not as a state, but as a process that needs support. Our proposal is that this support should be based on recognizing minors as vulnerable persons, that is to say, as persons with emotional needs, who are the subjects of rights and duties, and who have social needs of self-fulfillment. All in all, autonomy has to be understood as a process based on recognizing minors’ dignity as a previous condition to help them acquire those typical capabilities of autonomous persons. This concept of support requires, in the first place, a change of the social view of minors.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,593

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Human Rights, Human Dignity, and Power.Pablo Gilabert - 2015 - In Rowan Cruft, Matthew Liao & Massimo Renzo (eds.), Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights. Oxford University Press. pp. 196-213.
The interplay between autonomy and dignity: summarizing patients voices.Charlotte Delmar - 2013 - Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 16 (4):975-981.
Patient Autonomy and Social Fairness.Joshua Cohen - 2000 - Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 9 (3):391-399.
Health disparities and autonomy.Andrew Courtwright - 2008 - Bioethics 22 (8):431-439.

Analytics

Added to PP
2019-02-02

Downloads
5 (#1,344,154)

6 months
1 (#1,040,386)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?