## Facts

- Norma Wons, a competent adult and practicing Jehovah’s Witness, was admitted to Jackson Memorial Hospital for dysfunctional uterine bleeding.
- Treating physicians advised that without a blood transfusion she would, in all probability, die.
- While conscious and able to make an informed decision, Wons expressly refused a transfusion because her religious beliefs prohibited receiving blood from outside her body.
- The Public Health Trust of Dade County (hospital operator) petitioned a circuit court for authority to administer a transfusion over Wons’s objection.
- The trial court authorized the transfusion, reasoning that Wons’s minor children had a right to be reared by two loving parents that outweighed her religious freedom and privacy rights.
- The transfusion was administered while Wons was unconscious.
- The Third District Court of Appeal reversed, and certified to the Florida Supreme Court whether a competent adult may lawfully refuse a blood transfusion even though death may result.

## Issues

1. Whether a competent adult has a lawful right, grounded in constitutional privacy and religious freedom, to refuse a blood transfusion even if death is likely.
2. Whether the state’s interests in preserving life and protecting minor children were sufficiently compelling, on these facts, to justify overriding the patient’s refusal.

## Decision

- The Florida Supreme Court approved the Third District’s decision and answered the certified question yes.
- The court held that a competent adult’s informed refusal of a blood transfusion on religious grounds must be honored absent a sufficiently compelling state interest.
- The state’s asserted interests, including preserving life and protecting Wons’s minor children, did not justify compelled treatment on the record presented.
- The trial court’s order authorizing the transfusion over Wons’s objection was therefore improper.

## Legal Principles

- A competent adult’s informed medical decisions, including refusal of treatment, fall within the Florida Constitution’s right of privacy.
- Refusal of medical treatment based on religious belief is also protected by Florida’s constitutional guarantee of religious freedom.
- When the state seeks to intrude on these fundamental rights, it must show a compelling interest and that the intrusion is narrowly tailored.
- The state’s interest in preserving life, while important, is not absolute against a competent adult’s informed refusal.
- The existence of minor children does not automatically supply a compelling interest to override a competent parent’s refusal; the showing must be fact-specific, including the availability of other caretakers.

## Conclusion

Florida law protects a competent adult’s informed, religiously based refusal of a life-saving blood transfusion, and the state may override that decision only upon a compelling, narrowly justified showing; on these facts, concerns for life and the patient’s minor children were insufficient to compel treatment.


Public Health Tr. of Dade Cnty. v. Wons, 541 So. 2d 96 (Fla. 1989)