Anthony Stokes has been given less than six months to live after being denied a heart transplant due to ‘noncompliance.’ Stokes, a 15-year-old Atlanta native, was hospitalized on July 14 when he was diagnosed with an enlarged heart. Authorities at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta at Egleston have given little explanation for deciding to not put Stokes on the organ transplant waitlist, but his parents suspect it is because he’s had poor grades and ‘been in some trouble‘ in the past. According to his mother, Melencia Hamilton, the doctors said they "don’t have any evidence that he would take his medicine or that he would go to his follow-ups." 

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference is also advocating for Stokes, saying the doctors’ vague decision isn’t good enough to give up on a young boy’s life. The hospital’s refusal to be more specific about the basis for ‘noncompliance’ resonates with a larger system of denying rights to people with criminal backgrounds, and racially motivated skepticism about young people of color. 

(h/t Think Progress)