Every time this comes up I'm infuriated all over again, and reading Jonathan Turley's take on the issue in The Washington Post this morning was no exception. If we're picking sides, Turley and I are probably on the same one. He doesn't outright say that he disapproves of faith healing itself, but it's implied in his argument that the parents of the children who die from a lack of medical care essentially get a pass from the law:
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.Turley writes specifically about the Neumanns of Wisconsin, one of the most recent of these cases to be decided. Their daughter Madeline had diabetes that went undiagnosed and eventually killed her at age 11 last year. He compares the Neumanns to the Washburns of West Virginia, who don't practice faith healing and whose baby boy, Alex, died of an undiagnosed head injury after falling and hitting first his head, then his chin. In both instances, a child who could have been treated - and likely saved - by a doctor died because their parents didn't take them to one. The sentences? The Neumanns will serve one month a year in prison for the next six years and will be on probation for a decade. The Washburns relinquished all parental rights to their remaining children and will be in jail for three to fifteen years. Um, hello, double standards!
I agree with Turley that the "more lenient sentencing" for parents whose neglect of their children involves faith healing needs to stop, but my anger with this issue doesn't end there. I'm not a parent, so I can't fully appreciate the parent-child bond, but I'm on the receiving end of it from my parents and a familial observer of it between my brother and sister-in-law and my niece, and I cannot wrap my head around what kind of logic these supposedly loving parents are using as they watch their children suffer and die.
Faith or no faith, I don't see how any parent who watches their child's life slip away without running - screaming - for a doctor and demanding immediate treatment can possibly claim to love them or to be acting in their best interest. More than that, they're imposing their own religious restrictions on a child who isn't yet old enough to decide whether or not he or she agrees with them. "Making" little Susie or little Johnny give up their Sunday morning to go to Sunday school is one thing; ending their life because you believe if God doesn't save them they were supposed to die is another thing entirely: negligent homicide.
Yes, faith is central to the lives of many people. Yes, many parents can't imagine that their children would ever not carry on the religious traditions of their family. Yes, parents absolutely have the right to impart their beliefs - religious or otherwise - to their children. But no one has the right to watch a child die without exhausting every available resource to save them. Adults have enough knowledge of the consequences to say "Stop, that's enough, let nature take its course" or to sign a DNR. Children don't.
Play religious roulette with your own life, parents; until your children are old enough to decide for themselves whether or not faith healing is for them, take them to the doctor and keep them healthy the conventional way. It's kind of why mankind has spent so much time and energy throughout our history developing medicine. And doing everything in your power to care for your children - including taking them to a doctor when they need one - is one of the most basic responsibilities of being a parent.
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4 comments:
I love reading your comments. One of the great contributions of Thomas Aquinas was recognizing that all truth is God's truth, so that true faith and true science are not in contradiction. Thus advances in medicine are in fact understanding God's general revelation, as found in nature.
There are many "scientific" theories that have been popular in the past that are contrary to Christian revelation, such as eugenics, which was very popular in the first half of the 20th century.
In the last half of the 19th century, medicine was fairly primitive by today's standards, so that faith healers had some credibility. It was then that Christian Science and other such movements began. However, their premises are no longer valid.
Nonetheless, we must always be wary of the latest scientific proclamations.
Even the Amish bring their kids to the hospital in an emergency. They'll even take an ambulance if it's a matter of life and death...
Have you heard that joke about the Christian Scientist who gets hit by a car and is dying? An ambulance happens by and the medic comes to treat him and take him to the hospital. "No thank you," he says, "God will save me." So the medic goes away. Next down the road comes a doctor. He sees the man suffering and pulls over to help him. "No thank you," the man says, "God will save me." Next down the road comes a nurse...same deal (you get the idea). Finally the man dies. He arrives in heaven and he says to God, "I was lying there praying. I had faith in you! Why didn't you save me??" And God says "I sent you an ambulance, a doctor AND a nurse! What were you waiting for??"
I'm with you all the way. To force faith healing on children is not right in any shape or form. I'm a diabetic and it seems that a number of cases we hear about are of parents of diabetics that refuse to treat them. I know that those children suffered a long and painful death. Diabetes kills slowly and painfully, affecting each and every internal organ in your body. Why do these parents get more lenient sentences than those that outright physically beat their children to death? It's the same thing! So infuriating.
I totally agree - these people are murderers and should be treated like any other one. But it really is Darwinism at work, because if they kill off their children there will be no one to pass on their psychotic theories to and no way to perpetuate their poor genetics. But how you can just watch your child suffer and die when you know there is a way to stop it is beyond me, it's despicable.
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