Seriously Ill Children - Infant Mortality, Birth Defects, Low Birthweight And Prematurity, Who Makes Medical Decisions For Infants?

What greater pain could mortals have than this;
To see their children dead before their eyes?

—Euripides

To a parent, the death of a child is an affront to the proper order of things. Children are supposed to outlive their parents, not the other way around. And when a child comes into the world irreparably ill, what is a parent to do—insist on continuous medical intervention, hoping against hope that a miracle happens, or let nature take its course and allow the newborn to die? When a five-year-old child has painful, life-threatening disabilities, the parent is faced with a similar agonizing decision. That decision is the parent's to make, preferably with the advice of a sensitive physician. But what if the ailing child is an adolescent who refuses further treatment for a terminal illness? Does a parent honor that wish?