It is truly disturbing to find new evidence of how the state is allowed to interfere with the natural rights of parents. There are certainly cases where children need to be protected from abusive mothers and fathers, and we rely on the justice system to do that. At the same time, this presents a dangerous opportunity; once the state is allowed to determine what is good for a child, parents' authority can be so weakened that they are separated from their children and not allowed to provide them with the true care they desire so much to lavish on them. This is the heartbreaking case of the Pelletier family in West Hartford, Connecticut, and Linda and Lou Pelletier have been fighting for over a year. Their teenage daughter, Justina, began becoming seriously ill in 2010. Once a healthy and loving child, she began suffering bouts of weakness and illness. Her parents had her tested, and the team at Tufts Medical Center in Boston determined that the girl had a mitochondrial disease, just like her older sister. Vitamins and medication were prescribed, and Justiana was doing much better, while continuing to care for her family. Everything changed when she caught the flu and was taken to Boston Children's Hospital. There, a young doctor decided that Justina was not physically ill; he believed she suffered from a mental illness and was, for some reason, creating her own symptoms. Due to this doctor's disbelief in mitochondrial disease, a whole new treatment plan was created. Linda and Lou Pelletier were shocked that this was done without consulting Justiana's other doctors and they attempted to bring their daughter home. The state then took custody of the girl, with doctors at Children's Hospital accusing the parents of...... middle of paper ....... This link requires me to swear at all the more so the State in the Pelletier affair. This is not a case of shameful abuse of power in a third world country, but rather a case occurring in the heartland of the United States, where family is held in the highest esteem by courts and culture. A young girl is imprisoned in a state parish, her old medications taken away because a few doctors don't fully believe the illness she was diagnosed with, and her family is fighting the court system for the right to to be his parents. It is, to put it bluntly, difficult to imagine a more shameful exercise of state power than this nightmarish treatment of the entire Pelletier family. .” The Daily News, February 11, 2014. Web.