This book provides a multidisciplinary analysis of the potential conflict between a government's duty to protect children and a parent(s)' right to raise children in a manner they see fit. Using philosophical, bioethical, and legal analysis, the author engages with key scholars in pediatric decision-making and individual and religious rights theory. Going beyond the parent-child dyad, the author is deeply concerned both with the inteests of the broader society and with the appropriate limits of government interference in the private sphere. The text offers a balance of individual and population interests, maximizing liberty but safeguarding against harm. Bioethics and law professors will therefore be able to use this text for both a foundational overview as well as specific, subject-level analysis. Clinicians such as pediatricians and gynecologists, as well as policy-makers can use this text to achieve balance between these often competing claims. The book is written by a physician with practical and theoretical knowledge of the subject, and deep sympathy for the parental and family perspectives. As such, the book proposes a new way of evaluating parental and state interventions in children's' healthcare: a refreshing approach and a useful addition to the literature.

Chapter 1. Introduction, and What We Owe the Child.- Part 1: Prior approaches to state intervention.- Chapter 2. The Primrose Path: Rights and Autonomy.- Chapter 3. What Is Relevant: Interests, Needs, and Harms.- Chapter 4. What We Owe Parents and Family.- Chapter 5. What Society May Claim: Public Health.- Part 2: The State Intervention Test (SIT) and its Theoretical Basis.- Chapter 6. Political Considerations in a Liberal Pluralist State.- Chapter 7. The State Intervention Test: When to Interfere with Parental Decisions.- Part 3: Applications of the State Intervention Test.- Chapter 8. Treatment of Disease.- Chapter 9. Prevention and Screening.- Chapter 10. Enhancement of Function.- Chapter 11. The Maturing Minor.- Chapter 12. Sexual And Reproductive Issues I: