From time to time I have posted about parents who withhold medical treatment from their children based on the parents' wacky religious beliefs. All too often the result is that the child dies and when the parents are brought up on criminal neglect charges they put up a defense of religious freedom to mitigate their sentences. It's ironic because the same crowd that often wants a total ban on abortion - because "all life is precious" - are the same ones who defend this kind of bogus defense to actions that lead to the needless death of another human being. Jonathan Turley has a timely column in the Washington Post that looks at this phenomenon and asks an important question: Why do courts give believers a pass? I'm sorry, but in my view, religious fanaticism should be no defense to actions that are tantamount to deliberate murder. If all citizens - including children - have civil rights, then the courts need to step in an mandate proper medical treatment or, if the child has died because of the parents' actions, punish the parents as murderers. The child is still dead no matter the parents' motivation, and in this day and age, anyone other than a cretin ought to know better than to deliberately allow a child to die rather than seek medical treatment. Moreover, the child had no choice in choosing the religion into which it was born. Here are some column highlights: *
In the past 25 years, hundreds of children are believed to have died in the United States after faith-healing parents forbade medical attention to end their sickness or protect their lives. When minors die from a lack of parental care, it is usually a matter of criminal neglect and is often tried as murder. However, when parents say the neglect was an article of faith, courts routinely hand down lighter sentences. Faithful neglect has not been used as a criminal defense, but the claim is surprisingly effective in achieving more lenient sentencing, in which judges appear to render less unto Caesar and more unto God.
*
This disparate treatment was evident last month in Wisconsin, a state with an exemption for faith-based neglect under its child abuse laws. Leilani and Dale Neumann were sentenced for allowing their 11-year-old daughter, Madeline Kara Neumann, to die in 2008 from an undiagnosed but treatable form of diabetes. The Neumanns are affiliated with a faith-healing church called Unleavened Bread Ministries and continued to pray with other members while Madeline died. They could have received 25 years in prison. Instead, the court emphasized their religious rationale and gave them each six months in jail (to be served one month a year) and 10 years' probation.
*
Compare the Neumanns' legal treatment with a couple of other recent cases in which children were injured or killed by nonreligious neglect. . . . the parents of Alex Washburn. The 22-month-old died after hitting his head at home in Cross Lanes, W.Va. His parents, Elizabeth Dawn Thornton and Christopher Steven Washburn, said the boy fell a lot and hit his head on the corner of a table and his chin on a toilet. They apologized for not seeking medical help and agreed to terminate their parental rights to their other children, handing over custody to the state. "I wish I did seek medical treatment for my son faster," Washburn told the court. "That will definitely be with me for the rest of my life." The court sentenced both parents to three to 15 years in prison.
*
In a nation founded on the free exercise of religion, the legal system struggles with parents who act both criminally and faithfully in the deaths of their children. . . . While the vast majority of fundamentalist and faith-healing parents avail themselves of a doctor's care when faced with a dire medical condition, some religious parents continue to maintain that belief in God means belief in His power and discretion to heal. They take literally the fact that one of the names of God in the Old Testament, Jehovah-Rapha, means "I am the Lord your Physician," and point to Exodus 15:26, where God says, "I am the Lord that heals you."
*
Some parents go to incredible lengths to prevent doctors from doing God's work. Colleen Hauser of Minnesota gained national attention in May when she went into hiding with her 13-year-old son to avoid a court order that he receive chemotherapy for a Hodgkins lymphoma tumor growing in his chest. She was eventually forced to yield; this month, her son finished his final radiation treatment and his family says his cancer is gone.
*
In Oregon, the Followers of Christ church has been cited for injuries and deaths associated with its faith-healing beliefs for decades. In one 10-year period, estimated Larry Lewman, an Oregon state medical examiner, the church experienced 25 child deaths related to faith-based medical neglect. . . . These cases have thrived in a gray zone left by the Supreme Court decades ago. In 1944, in Prince v. Massachusetts, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that "the right to practice religion freely does not include liberty to expose the community or the child to communicable disease, or the latter to ill health or death." The court, however, did not expressly forbid the use of faith as a mitigating factor in sentencing -- a matter left to the states. Not only does this use place children at risk, it results in the troubling image of courts favoring religious parents over nonreligious parents in a nation committed to the separation of church and state.
Denying children critical care may be divinely ordained for some parents, but it should not be countenanced by the legal system. Until courts refuse to accept religion as a mitigating factor in sentencing in such cases, children will continue to die, neglected as an article of their parents' faith.
*
Denying children critical care may be divinely ordained for some parents, but it should not be countenanced by the legal system. Until courts refuse to accept religion as a mitigating factor in sentencing in such cases, children will continue to die, neglected as an article of their parents' faith.
*
In the past 25 years, hundreds of children are believed to have died in the United States after faith-healing parents forbade medical attention to end their sickness or protect their lives. When minors die from a lack of parental care, it is usually a matter of criminal neglect and is often tried as murder. However, when parents say the neglect was an article of faith, courts routinely hand down lighter sentences. Faithful neglect has not been used as a criminal defense, but the claim is surprisingly effective in achieving more lenient sentencing, in which judges appear to render less unto Caesar and more unto God.
*
This disparate treatment was evident last month in Wisconsin, a state with an exemption for faith-based neglect under its child abuse laws. Leilani and Dale Neumann were sentenced for allowing their 11-year-old daughter, Madeline Kara Neumann, to die in 2008 from an undiagnosed but treatable form of diabetes. The Neumanns are affiliated with a faith-healing church called Unleavened Bread Ministries and continued to pray with other members while Madeline died. They could have received 25 years in prison. Instead, the court emphasized their religious rationale and gave them each six months in jail (to be served one month a year) and 10 years' probation.
*
Compare the Neumanns' legal treatment with a couple of other recent cases in which children were injured or killed by nonreligious neglect. . . . the parents of Alex Washburn. The 22-month-old died after hitting his head at home in Cross Lanes, W.Va. His parents, Elizabeth Dawn Thornton and Christopher Steven Washburn, said the boy fell a lot and hit his head on the corner of a table and his chin on a toilet. They apologized for not seeking medical help and agreed to terminate their parental rights to their other children, handing over custody to the state. "I wish I did seek medical treatment for my son faster," Washburn told the court. "That will definitely be with me for the rest of my life." The court sentenced both parents to three to 15 years in prison.
*
In a nation founded on the free exercise of religion, the legal system struggles with parents who act both criminally and faithfully in the deaths of their children. . . . While the vast majority of fundamentalist and faith-healing parents avail themselves of a doctor's care when faced with a dire medical condition, some religious parents continue to maintain that belief in God means belief in His power and discretion to heal. They take literally the fact that one of the names of God in the Old Testament, Jehovah-Rapha, means "I am the Lord your Physician," and point to Exodus 15:26, where God says, "I am the Lord that heals you."
*
Some parents go to incredible lengths to prevent doctors from doing God's work. Colleen Hauser of Minnesota gained national attention in May when she went into hiding with her 13-year-old son to avoid a court order that he receive chemotherapy for a Hodgkins lymphoma tumor growing in his chest. She was eventually forced to yield; this month, her son finished his final radiation treatment and his family says his cancer is gone.
*
In Oregon, the Followers of Christ church has been cited for injuries and deaths associated with its faith-healing beliefs for decades. In one 10-year period, estimated Larry Lewman, an Oregon state medical examiner, the church experienced 25 child deaths related to faith-based medical neglect. . . . These cases have thrived in a gray zone left by the Supreme Court decades ago. In 1944, in Prince v. Massachusetts, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that "the right to practice religion freely does not include liberty to expose the community or the child to communicable disease, or the latter to ill health or death." The court, however, did not expressly forbid the use of faith as a mitigating factor in sentencing -- a matter left to the states. Not only does this use place children at risk, it results in the troubling image of courts favoring religious parents over nonreligious parents in a nation committed to the separation of church and state.
Denying children critical care may be divinely ordained for some parents, but it should not be countenanced by the legal system. Until courts refuse to accept religion as a mitigating factor in sentencing in such cases, children will continue to die, neglected as an article of their parents' faith.
*
Denying children critical care may be divinely ordained for some parents, but it should not be countenanced by the legal system. Until courts refuse to accept religion as a mitigating factor in sentencing in such cases, children will continue to die, neglected as an article of their parents' faith.
*
Once again, religion shows itself to be a force for evil rather than good. God gave man a mind and intellect, yet too many among the religious extremist crowd choose ignorance and mindlessness rather than using the mental abilities God gave them.
1 comment:
They take literally the fact that one of the names of God in the Old Testament, Jehovah-Rapha, means "I am the Lord your Physician," and point to Exodus 15:26, where God says, "I am the Lord that heals you."
Really? Do they take Leviticus literally too? That should be the litmus test. (hint: do not put on a garment woven with two different kinds of thread)
Too often these religions play Chinese buffet with the bible-and the rest of us have to bow down to their bullshit lest we be accused of discrimination against their 'religion'.
These parents should all be charged with murder and sentenced to death. Every person that knew should be charged as an accessory to murder.
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