A tween in the Netherlands who wanted to see his sick grandma knew it would be safer for her if he got his COVID shot first, but his father refused to let him get vaccinated. So the boy took matters into his own hands—and took his dad to court. Per court documents cited by the BBC, the 12-year-old from Groningen wanted to visit his grandmother "in the last stages of her life" with metastatic lung cancer, but he feared if he saw her sans vaccine, it could be "life-threatening" to her if he had COVID, didn't know it, and infected her, per Deutsche Welle.
Enter Dutch law, which says that while children 12 and over can get vaxxed, both parents need to consent. If the parents don't consent or agree with each other and the case comes before a court, the law dictates that the judge should rule in the child's best interest. In fact, ABC News notes that the Dutch government's website advises kids that "you can ultimately decide for yourself to get vaccinated" if parents balk.
In this case, the boy's parents are separated, and while the mother was OK with him getting vaccinated, the father wasn't, and court papers note the boy "found it difficult to talk to his father and felt his pleas were not being heard," per DW. On Thursday, Judge Bart Tromp of Groningen District Court sided with the boy, dismissing the father's assertions that the COVID vaccine is "in a test phase" and could affect his son's future ability to father children.
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Tromp also noted that, despite the risk of severe illness in children being lower than that of adults, kids could still come down with long COVID, and that the dad's worries of long-term side effects "lack any factual foundation," per ABC. Tromp also ordered that the boy be able to receive the vaccine "shortly," before his father could appeal. The case of a child bringing his parents to court over a COVID vaccine is believed to be one of the first of its kind, note the BBC and ABC. (More coronavirus vaccine stories.)
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