Over in the Jehovah’s Witness thread that got started today, the topic of refusing medical treatment for medical reasons is being discussed.
Rather than hijack that thread, I thought I’d start this one to declare the following:
Freedom of religion should be absolute, so long as it is a choice made by an adult of their own free will and they are of sound mind. However, imposing one’s religion on one’s children is another matter, * particularly * if it may end up harming the child, as in the case of religions such as Christian Science, where medical treatment is refused for ailments that are easily treated but can otherwise kill.
In cases such as these, I believe it is completely valid for the state to step in and override the parents. Parents do not OWN their children’s lives. I do not see how killing your child by forcing them to live the rules of a religion they cannot have chosen for themselves, and killing your child by beating them to death are any different. The end result is a dead child.
Why haven’t we made laws to cover this yet? Or have we and I missed hearing about it? Seems to me that every time some kid ends up dead because mom and dad practice Voodoo instead of taking antibiotics, it gets hashed in the courts… * again *, with differing results each time.
Someone tell me I’m missing something and this has been settled in favor of keeping kids alive until they are old enough to decide for themselves. Please.
And the government does? Do you really want your government to have the power to “step in” if it decides it doesn’t like the way YOU raise your children? What’s the limit? Cite parents for allowing kids to have alcohol because they take the Eucharist at Mass?
I’m sorry if it sounds like I’m reducing your argument to just that one point, but it’s an important one. In theory I tend to agree with you that children shouldn’t be held hostage to their parents beliefs, especially if they are dangerous. I guess I would differ in that I have no problem with parents instilling a religious world view in their children as long as they have the option to reject it when they reach the age of reason.
However, I am HORRIFIED at the thought of giving the government this sort of power. If you’re saying we cannot trust the parents, who in the vast majority of cases value their children more than themselves, how on earth can we trust the government to carry this out? Where is this in the constitution?
This isn’t abuse. This isn’t even neglect. Regardless of whether we agree with it, it’s the way parents are choosing to raise their children, and unless it turns into abuse or neglect, the government has no place intruding on that. That’s a slippery slope you don’t want to pursue.
FTR, several states explicitly state that withholding medical care from a child is not abuse as long as the parents or caregivers are engaged in a program of prayer in accordance with the tenets of a recognized religion. This, of course, puts the government in the position of deciding what religions are and aren’t recognized, which IMHO is dangerous First Amendment ground.
Well, I don’t know where you live, Palandine, but here in the U.S. the government already has the power to step in and take children from their parents if they suspect neglect, abuse, unsanitary living conditions, parental unfitness, etc.
And yes, I do trust the government to decide when a child is in danger. We trust them to pass laws forbidding child abuse, why wouldn’t we trust them to enforce those laws?
The pertinent question is whether religion should be an exception to such laws. I think the only consistent answer is “no.” We don’t allow people to sacrifice virgins at an alttar just because they claim it’s part of their religion. We don’t allow doomsday cults to violate firearm laws. And we shouldn’t allow parents to neglect their children in the name of religion when we don’t allow it for any other reason.
The only valid question here is where to draw the line. Many religions brainwash their children from birth. There was a case a little while ago where a 16 year old Christian Scientist girl died of diabetes. The state tried to prosecute her parents for neglect or manslaughter or something, but the defense argued that it was the girl’s own choice not to take any medicine for her condition. Well, maybe, but had she not been brainwashed by an evil cult for the first 16 years of her life, she would have definitely made a different choice.
What about religions that brainwash their children with ideas about Hell (or sex, or homosexuality) that scare the kids so much that they end up psychologically damaged for the rest of their lives? Is that abuse?
Sorry, no answers here, just questions.
On a slightly related note, I hope this explains to every theist out there why certain atheists (such as myself) are evangelicals. Religion has done too much harm to the world to let it persist unchallenged.
And you don’t think that allowing a child to DIE for want of some penicillin is NOT abuse?
Give me a break.
Besides which, while I do not believe “the Government” inherently knows better about anything, neither do I believe that someone knows better just because they had the biological ability to reproduce. Most living things can reproduce - the fact that any given human being can and does automatically makes them fit to raise a child? I don’t think so. Unfortunately, we don’t have any alternative at the moment.
But as far as I’m concerned, there is no slippery slope on this one, it is as clear as glass. Your belief system includes withholding medical treatment from your child? Bzzzzzzzzzzzz! So sorry…guess again. You wanna kill yourself, fine. You wanna kill/maim/disable your kid by allowing illness to fester unchecked? No, don’t think so.
Misguided, if not outright evil, parents who adhere to, say, the alternative-medicine religion, the anti-breast impplant religion, or the environmentalist religion, ought not to be allowed to mistreat children with herbs and lies about the dangers of silicone or of global warming. At the very least, this will cause both immediate stress and an ignorance which will lower their socioeconomic standing, and thus health, later in life.
The same, of course, applies to teachers, and priests falsely labelled “chiropractors”, “trial lawyers”, and “news anchors”.
I also know some gay people who are seriously, psycholically messed up because they were raised Catholic. As far as I’m concerned, telling a gay child that he is evil and going to hell is child abuse.
When should the law allow medical professionals to override parental decisions? Whenever there is immediate danger of life and limb or there is a high probability of permanent damage occurring without treatment. To reiterate something I told dougiemonty in an earlier thread, parents have the rights of guardianship, not ownership. Allowing a child to die, or to go blind of diabetes, or to suffer some other disability because of a supernatural belief is simply barbaric and intolerable.
Ah, abuse or neglect, but not the practice of a religious faith.
Because what we are talking about is not abuse or neglect. What we are talking about is taking children away from their parents because we don’t like the way they worship. That’s dangerous; at least this Catholic Libertarian thinks so.
Listen, I believe in medical care. I will provide it for my own children, if I’m lucky enough to have kids. However, it is not my place or my government’s place to take away children from loving parents if they decide, based on their faith, that they wish to pray for their children or take them to a Christian Science practitioner and have faith in God to take care of the rest. Again, it’s a slippery slope. It’s not always certain a child will live anyway if given care. I would also not stop a parent who wanted to give a child alternative or Eastern medicine, even though I think that’s just as dangerous as Christian Science or faith healing, if not more so. I also have no problem with doctors, family members, or whoever trying to disuade such parents from their intended course of treatment. But, in the end, it is not abuse or neglect. And I am one of those people that believes that a GOVERNMENT should not break up a family without a darned good reason. Not liking the fact that a parent has faith doesn’t even come close.
There are laws against killing people. There are laws against certain firearm offenses. However, a parent directing medical care for a child is not neglect on the face of it. If you can PROVE it’s neglect–i.e., “I don’t give a damn if this kid dies, let’s just see what God does” as opposed to “I love my child, but we have deeply held religious beliefs and, hard as they are, we’re going to go on faith and care for this child as best we can until the situation resolves itself”–then by all means go for it. However, you do have to meet that burden of proof first.
And we do allow it all the time. As above, any American parent is free to give a child alternative medicine, Ayurveda, or Chinese herbal medicine–all of which are to greater or lesser degrees unproven–without having the abuse or neglect charge hurled at them. Again, these three are just as dangerous as Christian Science or faith healing.
All parents brainwash their kids, whether it be with their religious beliefs (or their evangelical atheism), their prejudices, their values, their rules, and their morality.
However, I am sure you would say this girl was perfectly within her rights to make choices about other aspects of her life. You want the government to step in because you don’t like the choice SHE made. Everyone makes their decisions based on their experiences through life and indeed what they’ve picked up from others. Call it brainwashing, call it nurture, call it environment. Just don’t call it abuse or neglect unless you have proof.
This is a major topic for discussion in its own right. I can see where you’re coming from, but I also think your distaste for people having a profession of faith may be blinding you to the fact that all world views (not simply religions) do this. Do you REALLY want to give the government the power to arbitrate over which world view is abusive and which isn’t? How do you propose to do that? I presume you didn’t vote for the guy who’s going to be in the White House for the next four years. Do you want him to have the power to take your kids away from you because he doesn’t like your values? In the same way, I as a Libertarian don’t want a government that is out of sync with my values to have that sort of power over my parenting.
And this Catholic of very strong beliefs defends your right to believe as you wish, although you may be called on to provide a cite every now and then. I also would fight to my last breath to keep the government from taking away your children because they didn’t agree with your philosophy.
This is OT, but your last point made me think of the bit in Life of Brian where the PFJ and the JPF are talking about the horrors of Roman oppression…except for the roads, the law and order, the schools, the hospitals…
Sure, religion has done some terrible things. However, I don’t see a whole lot of atheist hospitals or orphanages around.
Just be sure when you’re challenging religion that you challenge Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, voodoo, Shintoism, Hinduism, the Black Muslims, and so on. Surely if there’s no God we’re all equally misguided and open for ridicule.
Nope. I wouldn’t do it myself, but if a family of deep religious faith wants to rely on the tenets of their faith rather than modern medicine, I may disagree, but it’s not for the government to break up a family because of it.
Some parts of having freedom aren’t nice. We all have to deal with things we don’t agree with. I have to live in a society that holds the ability to kill one’s child in the womb as a right. I also have to live in a society where people of different religious beliefs are allowed to live according to those tenets, regardless of whether you or I agree with them. Unpleasant, but the alternative is not only much worse, it is untenable.
I agree with the second half of your statement. No, just because someone squeezes out a kid does not automatically make her a good parent. However, in the absence of evidence to the contrary (that is, if a kid is obviously well fed and clothed and appears to be thriving in a loving home), a parent following a profession of faith, even one that seems odd or hard to us, does not constitute abuse or neglect.
And you don’t see how this is a slippery slope?
I don’t often come into GD because the odds of actually winning someone over to your side on hot-button issues is practically nil. I appreciate both your answers and I hope I’ve been able to give you the other side. Again, FWIW, as a Catholic I believe medicine and medical care are good things. However, as an American I believe that the right of a loving family to be free from government oversight is also sacrosanct, even if it means bad things sometimes happen. The job of the government isn’t to protect us from every bd thing. It can’t. And by interfering in the faith lives of people, it not only is not protecting anyone, it is hurting us all by infringing on essential rights.
Because many people disagree with you. There are many issues in society in with people feel strongly one way or the other (guns, abortion, etc…) It’s best just to leave people alone. ie Many people argue that abortion is child murder, but others feel differently. Many people feel that all guns should be banned to protect the children.
Saying ‘we must do x’ to protect children is a slippery slope type of argument. People, adults and children, die every day. It’s just part of life.
This is something I’m struggling with (sorry if this is a hijack, but I think it’s relavent). I’m in a mixed marriage, with three kids from my previous marriage. My wife is a Christain, I’m an atheist (note:ex wife is not particulary religious, grandparents on all fronts are Christian). I have no idea of how to properly approach them on these subjects, as I do find some aspects of Christianity harmful.
On the OP, I’m in full agreement. I know there are first ammendment implications, but to me LIFE is more important than letting someone die because of a religious belief.
Yeah, it’s a slippery slope type of argument. So fucking what? There are worst things in life than slipping down your precious slope, and saving children is one of them.
Let’s get this straight - protecting children’s lives is more important than “Freedom of Speech”, “Freedom of Religion” or “Right to bear arms”. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the primary pupose of any human society. So spare me the hypotheticals.
It is arguable that denying a child medical treatment constitutes neglect. I don’t see why treatment is not held on a par with food and water; can anyone explain to me why it is not?
I don’t see why an intelligent, mentally competent person would deny their precious child medical care if it would save their life. Aren’t these sheep in people’s clothing too incompetent to be caring for children in the first place? Too bad people are allowed to reproduce without a license.
Yes, there are laws against certain things such as murder, for which we do not give religious exemptions. Child neglect should be one of those things.
A case in point: Recently (a few years ago) in Utah, these parents were starving their infant son, giving him nothing ot eat but lettuce and water. The child was eventually taken away from them. They held religious beliefs which caused them to think that their son was the Messiah or some nonsense like that, and that feeding him food wood corrupt his pure body.
Should we just let parents starve their children because it’s their religious belief? Hell no! Likewise, we shouldn’t allow parents to let their kids die from not getting simple medication because it’s their religious belief. I don’t care what the law is; the whole debate is about what the law should be!
There is a difference between alternative medicine and no medicine. As Ptahlis pointed out, the criteria for removal from a household is “immediate danger of life and limb or there is a high probability of permanent damage occurring without treatment.” If a child takes a week longer to get over a cold because his parents gave his gingko instead of antibiotics, well that doesn’t qualify. If a child is depressed and he gets St. John’s Wort instead of real antidepressants, then I feel sorry for him, but that’s not enough to remove him from his parents’ care. If a child is dying of cancer, and her parents give her alternative medicine, no medicine, Native American prayer chants, or any other b.s., then yes, we remove her from the home. She’s dying!
Frankly, the bottom line for me is that we don’t allow people to do anything for religious reasons that we don’t allow them to do for any other reasons. If something qualifies as abuse or neglect, it’s abuse or neglect whether there’s religious belief behind it or not. I don’t know what the current law is, but if not giving medicine to a dying child doesn’t currently qualify as child abuse, it should!
By the way, I’m not a Jehovah witness, but when the big controversy broke in Canada with regard to Hepatitus C and aids in the national blood supply for several years,unchecked, I wondered how many lives were spared because JW’s demanded blood substitutes instead of blood products for transfusion.
One more point on religious/non-religious differences. Suppose I give my child a giant serving of arsenic with his dinner one night, and he keels over dead. I tell the police:
a) I was sick of caring for him, so I killed him.
b) My religious beliefs hold that every child should be given arsenic on his 2nd birthday as an initiation ceremony. I don’t believe that arsenic really kills anyone; that’s just a myth made up to persecute practicioners of my particular faith.
To me, it’s obvious that I should go to jail no matter what I tell the cops. But the alternative position holds that killing a child with arsenic is okay as long as it’s a religious belief.
Now, I suppose you could make a distinction between actively taking a life and passively letting a child die. So suppose I just leave piles or arsenic sitting around the house, and claim that it’s a religious practice to do so? Is that okay? Is it okay only if I do so for religious reasons, but not if I’m hoping that my kid will eat some and die?
I dislike the term slippery slope. I prefer to view it more as from fringe to center.
If a law universally classified witholding medical care from children on religous grounds as neglect, the edges of our freedom would be clipped off. What about circumcision? Eight day old male Jews undergo a medically unecessary(alright that's a whole other GD, but let it go) surgery without anesthetic. As a Jew, I support this. But once the government's authority over parents expands in to religious matters, the edges would be trimmed off our rights at an alarming pace. Since a basic tenet of Christian Science would now be illegal, would the government be justified in using surveillance on any CS's with kids? In outlawing the religion completely due to its telling folowers to perform a criminal activity?
I disagree with a whole lot of practices in a whole lot of religions. But if we lose the edges of our freedom, eventualy we don't have any left.
I think you could very easily treat that as abuse and neglect under the current laws without violating the religious tenets that most of the posts here have been talking about.
If I understand them correctly, religious people who buy into faith healing or Christian Science do not say they are “not treating” their children, they merely say they are treating them in accordance with their beliefs. The damage done to society by infringing on that faith is worse than any damage that might happen to a child, as terrible as that is. If you believe that children should be taken away from parents because they are treated with TLC and prayer rather than modern Western medicine, than to avoid being an anti-religious bigot, you also must believe that children should be taken away from parents who practice other unorthodox forms of treatment, such as Ayurveda, alternative medicine, and Chinese herbal medicine. In the end, they’re all forms of parents forcing their views on their children. And you’d have to take children away from Amish communities as well, I presume.
Rights don’t exist to protect easy things; they exist precisely for situations like this.
Well, I applaud you on your consistency. I was expecting you’d say otherwise. Still, I don’t think many people would go along with you.
And, of course, (Palandine takes time to don her flame-retardant long johns) sometimes kids and adults get better with no treatment, just prayer. Make of that what you will. When I was eight my left lung collapsed after I’d had a serious chest infection for about a week. I was taken to the hospital, where my parents were told that I would require surgery if the situation did not resolve in a week. My mother lit a candle at church and prayed the night before my surgery. The next morning the hole in my lung had closed, and surgery was not necessary. Was that a miracle? I don’t know. The power of prayer and positive beliefs? The love of a mother? Just one of those things? I don’t know, but I do know I recovered from a serious illness with essentially no medical treatment. It does happen. And sometimes kids die with the very best care Western medicine can provide. None of which changes the fact that we have a nation of rights, and one of those rights is to practice faith free from government interference and raise children according to personal beliefs.
I believe that intent is an important part of whether an act is intentional abuse or neglect. If you don’t give your kid medicine because you want to spend the money to buy crack or you just don’t care for the kid, that’s abuse and neglect. If you decided to treat a beloved child with TLC and prayer or the like because you love them and you think you are acting in the child’s best interest, you’d be hard-pressed to prove abuse or neglect.
Religion is no excuse here, and I find it unfathomable that anyone would think it was. Boiled down to it, you are directly supporting the right of an adult to allow a child to die merely because they are a parent, based on a supernatural belief with no evidence to support it. Parental rights are important, yet the right to life is more so. Even libertarians believe that a government should exist to protect rights, so why do you automatically choose the parent’s rights over that of the child? Nobody is telling anyone what to believe or how to worship until they infringe on a child’s right to life.
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Abuse. Letting them die unnecessarily because of superstition would be abuse, not neglect. It doesn’t matter how much the parents love their kids. Parents who beat the hell out of their kids often love them and think they are doing the best for them. How exactly is withholding lifesaving care from a child based on faith any different than withholding food and water based on faith? How about letting your kid handle poisonous snakes?
Exactly. Thank you for pointing that out. At a certain point we assume that a person is able to weigh pros and cons and develop rational trains of thought that may either affirm or counter ideological indoctrination, no? While there may be disagreement about where this point is, it is hardly unfair to conclude that before this point is reached, a truly informed decision is not possible for the child to make.
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16 is an age smack in the middle of the murky zone where some people may very well be able to make an informed choice, while others might not. Of course I don’t personally like her choice. Religion or not I think she was stupid and paid for it with her life. She has the right to this particular brand of stupidity if her decision was an informed one. If not, however, then she paid the price of being born to the wrong parents.
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Nope, just parental actions. The government doesn’t stop anyone from believing anything. If someone thinks that blacks are mud people that deserve to be exterminated, that’s just fine with the government. If environmentalists think that a dam under construction is a criminal act against nature, the government won’t blink. These groups can even march in protest, write their congressmen, and preach their messages to willing audiences, and the government will protect their right to do so. But if they sabotage the construction, or if they kill a black man, (i.e. deprive someone else of their rights in Libertarian terms) then the government steps in. Likewise, anyone can preach against the supposed evils of blood transfusion, petition people not to have transfusions for themselves, and even pray for the poor souls of the “benighted” folks who have undergone this procedure, yet when these people attempt to deprive a child, anychild, of the procedure when it is deemed medically necessary, then they are depriving that child of their right to life, and the government has every right, hell the duty to step in.
Cries of “Who will decide?” and “Slippery slope!” don’t scare me. Unlike some libertarians whom I’ve seen, I do not live in constant fear of the government or my fellow citizens who make it up. The law has a very equitable standard that can be used, reasonable doubt. If it can be shown beyond a reasonable doubt that a patient will recover with a treatment he will otherwise die without, then the law should have the ability to trump parental superstition. Hey, if the parents can establish beyond reasonble doubt that Shiva, Allah, Zeus, or Jehovah will save the kid without the treatment, then I’ll happily tell the law to back off.
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So where do you draw the line then? Beatings? Sexual abuse? Child prostitution? What, if anything, justifies the government’s involvement?
So, dead kid=good government? Better to protect the right of religious adults to act on a religious viewpoint than a the right of a child to live? How exactly is preventing a child’s death by forcing them to have a needed transfusion hurting us all?
Every single law is an abridgement of one’s freedoms. Laws either tell you what you must not do, or they tell you what you must do. By the logic of the slippery slope, we should have no freedoms at all by now.
