Some questions don't have answers that can be neatly plotted.

In those cases we are left to make choices without certainty. When I read about Dennis Lindberg, the 14-year-old from Mount Vernon, Wash., who died after declining blood transfusions, my gut told me he was too young to make that choice.

Dennis was undergoing chemotherapy for leukemia when his blood count fell enough that transfusions became necessary. Dennis, a Jehovah's Witness, believed a transfusion would make him unclean, so he refused, knowing it would mean death.

Adults are usually allowed to make life-or-death choices based on faith.

The question that became a public matter in this instance was whether a 14-year-old could be mature enough to make that kind of decision.

A judge decided that this particular teen was.

My son is 15, and I believe he is a thoughtful, sensible person, but there are limits to the kinds of decisions my wife and I allow him to make. His judgment is not fully formed.

My gut reaction to this case has support from the social sciences. The early to middle teen years are a time when young people struggle with what they believe, as they begin separating from their parents and understanding the world for themselves. They experiment, and they are prone to making poor choices. They can be mature one minute and juvenile the next.

The week Dennis died, I attended a bar mitzvah, the Jewish coming-of-age ceremony. Tradition says that when a boy reaches 13 he can marry, enter into contracts and so on. For a girl it is 12. Mazel tov, Matt, but I don't think you're going to be getting married anytime soon.

Religions and cultures can update themselves with the times and still honor old traditions. I hope someone in Dennis' religion is considering that. In the meantime, a judge had to make a difficult choice.

I don't believe Dennis was mature enough to make a life-or-death decision. It's true that forcing treatments on him would have been difficult, if not impossible, and a different ruling might not have changed the outcome.

But it would have been more in keeping with what we know about 14-year-olds.

Two years ago the Supreme Court struck down the death penalty for juveniles, basing its decision on growing medical and social-science evidence that teenagers are too immature to be held to the same standards as adults.

That court made the right choice.