Background

In Petition of a Scottish Health Board for the court to exercise its parens patriae jurisdiction to authorise medical treatment of Child A [2025] CSOH 121, Child A was a 14-year-old girl, a Jehovah’s Witness, who was about to undergo a medical procedure during which blood loss was inevitable, though the risk of her requiring a blood transfusion was very low. In accordance with her religious beliefs, she told her clinicians that she refused consent to transfusions of primary blood components such as red blood cells, plasma, platelets, and white cells, even in a life-threatening emergency, though she didconsent to receive products derived from minor blood fractions (which was permissible within her faith) – and they agreed that she had the capacity under s.2(4) Age of Legal Capacity (Scotland) Act 1991 to make that decision [1]. Continue reading →