Nope sorry, that doesn’t work for me. If a doctor says your child needs X or she will die, that seems to me to be very good rationale for giving that child X. Belief that prayer, herbs, or spinnning on you head in circles, might help or it’s God’s will/Fate/Bad Luck that they die to me is neglect. We have doctors, the FDA, scientist and history to back us up on the effectiveness of medication.
In at least some states,the law treats not providing medical care in the same way regardless of the reason. It doesn’t matter if the parents have religious beliefs against medical care or certain forms of it, or if they simply practice some other form of treatment because it’s their preference.If not providing medical care in a specific situation is neglect, it’s neglect for the Christian Scientist, the unaffiliated faith healer, the person who prefers herbal medicine and the person who just doesn’t care.In the places that treat them differently, it’s those doing it for religious reasons who are exempt from the law.
And BTW, in my experience, the children usually are not “taken away” in the sense that they are put into foster homes when it’s for any reason except “just don’t care”.(doesn’t mean it never happens) If the child is in the hospital, the state may gain custody in order to consent to the treatment (for example a child of a Jehovah’s witness who needs a blood transfusion)and custody could then be returned to the parents when the child is ready to leave the hospital.In less of an emergency situation, the children may never leave the home, provided the parents agree to and do in fact provide the care.
Uh, Palandine…why would you even question this? it seems quite obvious that the medical community was fully aware that you could end up healing without intervention. They told your parents plainly that such healing, if it were to occur, should occur within a week. It did. Nothing supernatural about it.
stoid
Yeah? Why is that exactly?
**
Let’s see. On the one hand we have the demonstrable results of medical treatment, and on the other we have… nothing. Yes, if a parent has a child with leukemia and they treat them with coffee enemas or a voodoo doll, I would indeed hope that someone would get that kid out of there and to an oncologist. I do not advocate that the state take the kid away from the parents, just that it step in and allow the doctors to treat the kid over parental objection.
**
As soon as you have evidence to support that, I will.
**
So the doctors thought it might resolve itself, and it did. Is this anecdote supposed to be evidence of anything?
**
Sure, but by your doctor’s own admission, you did not need treatment at the time. And while medicine is never a 100% guarantee, it has a huge mountain of evidence behind it. It’s success is demonstrable, repeatable, and statistically undeniable. If faith healing or prayer ever achieves comparable success then I’ll certainly back off.
**
Surely you aren’t arguing for absolute rights are you? As with every right we have, religious freedom is not an absolute one. One standard the government often uses in determining whether it should step in and prevent the exercise of a particular right is when said exercise demonstrably endangers another’s life. You can’t yell “fire” in a crowded theater, build pipe bombs in your apartment, or sacrifice a kid to Baal. Neither should exercising your religious freedom sentence a kid to death.
While intent is important, it’s hardly germane as to whether or not the kid deserves treatment. The state should step in and insure proper medical care whether the parents are hateful child-beaters or lovingly awaiting the intercession of David Koresh.
And there you have the difference between a religious person and the non-religious. There have been millions who have willingly died for their religious beliefs. They’re martyrs, almost every religion has them, and hundreds more are added every year.
Obviously, the difference is that most martyrs were adults choosing their own fate; but my point is that the idea that staying alive trumps all other concerns is fundamentally out of sync with most religions.
Big difference there, which seems to be escaping those arguing it.
You may give your life for your faith in martyrdom. That’s your privilege. It’s yours to do with as you wish; religion and secular philosophy are united on this.
You may not take the life of another based on your faith. And that is valid whether you’re talking active human sacrifice or passive failure to provide medical care on doctrinal grounds. (BTW, any Christian with the “gift of healing” as a valid charisma of the Holy Spirit, presuming such a thing exists, will tell you to get the best medical care you can and then pray over you for healing; God gave those doctors their calling and helped them develop their skill, too. The “trust in faith alone” charlatans are just that.)
In the absence of consensus on religious belief on this board, YM of course MV. But that would be my bottom line.
From Ontario Consultants for Religious Tolerance:
Emphasis mine.
If this is what a site that exists solely for the promotion of tolerance has to say on the subject, all those crying “slippery slope” should perhaps take a moment to think.
For the most part, any medical treatment involves risk of adverse outcome. That is why doctors are highly trained, and their decisions highly scrutinized. The child that is easily cured by penicillin could also be easily killed by a bad reaction to penicillin.
Is it “abuse” to subject a child to overly heroic efforts to preserve his/her life above all else?
I agree with the OP, except that rather than “taking them away” I believe that they should just be required to allow the medical care for any child under 16. After 16, the child can make their own choices.
As a side note, in a sort of socially interesting way, I live in the city where both the 16-year-old mentioned above and the couple who only fed their child lettuce and watermelon come from (in Pennsylvania).
The parents of the 16-year-old girl (the Nixons) have also had two other children die from lack of medical care. Faith Tabernacle (the congregation that the Nixons belong to) is a pretty controversial church around here, mostly because of the Nixons and a few other families whose children died of easily treatable diseases.
And it should be noted that the son of the other couple had been taken away from them and placed in the hospital before the incident where they disappeared into the desert. They kidnapped him from the hospital and fled. Apparently, taking the children away doesn’t always work.
How the hell is the Catholic Church suppose to identify homosexual children?
Marc
Well actually we don’t have this straight. What the hell ever happened to caring about adults? I’m really sick and tired of people trotting out children for every damn cause there is. Protecting children isn’t the most important thing in the world. I’m an adult and I’m just as human as them. So spare us all the “save the children” tripe.
Marc
That’s how I feel about religous people in general. How can intelligent, mentally competent people believe X is true? Truth is some people believe that the medical care will taint the persons soul and they won’t get into heaven. Silly? Sure.
Marc
There we go again. Blood transfusions is not the be-all and end-all of medical treatment that all of you depict, and should not be put into the same vein like penecillin, anti-biotics and vaccination, which JW’s do take. No matter how well-tested the supply is, blood still carries a lot of risk that doesn’t warrant forcible capituation religious freedom. The ban on UK blood because of CJD is proof to me about the wisdom of the JW’s position on blood. Notice that I am not Bible-thumping here.
Note if a court rules that a child should be forced to undergo a transfusion, and the child winds up with AIDS because of it, then there is no way one can sue the court.
There are alternative treatments, including bloodless surgery and artificial blood, that should be explred. Even surgeons do no want to shed as much blood during operations.
Marc, I’ve encountered your opinions before, and I respect them. You believe that a government’s primery purpose is to protect the rights of its citizens. Fine. I believe that protecting people’s rights is important as well - but not as important as saving people’s lives, especially the lives of those incapable of protecting themselves. I will be moved from my belief the same day you will be moved from yours, which will be the day David B finds Jesus.
I know that a concilliatory attitue is inappropriate for the GD, but I suggest we simply agree to disagree.
**
sigh Yup.
**
Nobody is promoting transfusions as a panacea. Yet they are a time-tested, standard medical treatment used to save many thousands of lives.
**
A “lot of risk” capacitor? Care to quantify that any? The fact is that complications arising from transfusions are extremely rare, and are far outweighed by the benefits of transfusions as has been proven in emergency rooms across the country every day for many years.
**
So your point here is what exactly? That it is unacceptable for a fatal outcome to result from government action in a tiny fraction of a percent of cases, but is perfectly acceptable in a large number of cases so long as it was the parents’ choice?
And people are actively working toward developing those blood substitutes. Nobody would like to have them more than doctors. They would like to help people, even foolish ones, and they aren’t exactly thrilled about that tiny percentage of infected blood. So if they can find a substitute the JWs would allow it would make them ecstatically happy. So far, unfortunately, none have been entirely successful.
**
Personally I believe that the best way for the government to save lives is by protecting our rights. In fact I do have a serious problem with parents who refuse to allow procedures that have a good chance of saving a sick child’s life. The problem is very complex because we’re getting into some serious religious freedoms. The courts have typically been reluctant to infringe on religious beliefs and tend to give them an awful lot of leeway.
What I really really took exception to was your statement regarding protecting children’s lives as being “…the primary purpose of any human society…” I really think that is a big pile of horse hockey. The needs of children do not outweigh the needs of us young adults, those middle aged people, or the elderly for that matter. I actually like children I just don’t consider them the end all be all of human existence.
We can always agree to disagree, that’s fine.
Marc
What about the Amish? Anyone know their take on the issue?
Personally, if a kid croaks because of a parent’s beliefs, I figure that’s hard knocks. “I brought you into this world, I can take you out of it” doesn’t seem too ridiculous to me (yeah, yeah, so it’s callous). A dead kid at least doesn’t go out and commit Unspeakable Atrocitires to satisfy their inner demons like a terminally-screwed-up-but-living kid would…and really, these are mostly good people, if you just ignore the gaping chasm their train of logic must eventually go over.
In this case, I’d have to say the damage inflicted is strictly limited to themselves, so the nutso factor involved is more or less harmless to the rest of society. Thus, no to interfering with their nutball beliefs. I don’t want anyone beating down my door over my own harmless nutball beliefs, so I’ll extend the same courtesy to others.
“How the hell is the Catholic Church suppose to identify homosexual children?”
—Well, approx. one out of every ten children is gay. So just figure when you tell your kids that homosexuality is evil and a sin, and homosexuals go to hell, one in ten of those kids will wind up emotionally injured and possibly suicidal.
Can’t spot that one in ten when they’re young? Then maybe the intelligent thing to do is not bring the subject up in the first place.
“Personally, if a kid croaks because of a parent’s beliefs, I figure that’s hard knocks. “I brought you into this world, I can take you out of it” doesn’t seem too ridiculous to me (yeah, yeah, so it’s callous).”
—So, umm, we should just let Susan Smith ouit of jail with an apology and a dozen roses?
One, children are no more or less valuable than anyone else. Saying we must trample on peoples religous freedoms because it’s necessary to ‘save the children’ is a load of bull.
Two, you left out my best example. Many people want to ban abortion ‘to save the children.’ There are limits to what people are willing to do in order to ‘save that children.’
Three, the parents in question are not guilty of neglecting their children. They are paying close attention at choosing a treatment method that they feel is best. (Admittedly a method that is not scientifically proven)
Four, considering recent election results I don’t think your point of view has much chance of becomming law. There is a strong streak of religous fundamentalism running in this country.