An Idaho Republican is refusing to back a proposal that would require religious parents to seek medical care for their dying children — but he won’t promise any changes to a state law protecting faith healers. Parents are allowed under state law to substitute prayer as a form of medical treatment and carves out a religious exemption to manslaughter, capital murder and negligent homicide charges if those prayers go unanswered and their child dies. Critics of the law said some Idaho children are needlessly dying from treatable ailments such as diabetes, pneumonia and food poisoning-related dehydration, reported KOIN-TV…. “These are not things children die of in our time,” said Linda Martin, who has been pushing for changes to the law. “This is what children died of back in the 1800s — not in the 2000.”…. Martin grew up in the Pentecostal group known as the Followers of Christ, which punishes members who seek medical care by shunning them from their church.
I suspect that in the interest of full disclosure, I should own up to one of my blind spots: child abuse, especially when justified by religion and/or medical neglect. There are few things guaranteed to get me spun up faster than children being abused by those charged with loving and caring for them. The idea that religious fanatics believe their children can be cured with prayer is the textbook definition of child abuse and neglect. When children die from treatable, in some cases easily preventable, diseases…and no one thinks anything of it because…religious freedom, that’s where I normally lose my ability to be rational.
There should be a reserved parking space in Hell for those so fanatical in their hyper-religiosity and devotion to Jesus Christ that they’d refuse to treat a sick child with anything but prayer. Do they not believe modern medicine to be a gift from a benevolent God? How can they look past what modern medicine can provide and allow their children to suffer, perhaps even die, needlessly? Does God not help those who help themselves?
Who’s standing up for the rights and well-being of the children?
If these parents truly cared about their children as they claim to, they’d avail themselves of every opportunity available to treat them when they’re sick instead of forcing themselves to suffer (or worse) in the name of Jesus Christ.
The church forbids the use of medicines such as antibiotics, but state law protects parents from charges if they supplement their prayers with just the slightest gesture toward health treatment — such as giving a sick child orange juice.
A measure that would have limited the religious exemption was defeated last year, following a string of preventable child deaths, because Republican lawmakers said it would have violated the sect’s religious freedom.
“Children do die,” said state Rep. Christy Perry (R-Nampa) last year. “I’m not trying to sound callous, but (reformers) want to act as if death is an anomaly. But it’s not — it’s a way of life.”
No. No. HELL NO. Rep. Perry’s statement represents just about the most callous and stunningly ignorant thing I’ve heard outside the 2016 GOP Presidential circus campaign. I have no problem with the idea of “religious freedom,” but that freedom doesn’t come with a free pass to allow your children to suffer and possibly die because you refuse to seek readily available medical treatment. Children dying isn’t a “way of life,” not when some die because their parents believe their religious beliefs allow them to subject their children to unnecessary pain, suffering, and even death.
This is a battle that’s been fought in Oregon for years, and it wasn’t until relatively recently that parents were imprisoned for abusing their children by refusing to seek medical treatment for them. Some of the children suffered unbelievably, but the parents invariably got away with such egregious child abuse because…religious freedom. The state legislature finally passed a law reining in these abuses, and as a result, several parents have been convicted and sent to prison. Finally, someone is standing up for children. In Oregon. In Idaho, you can still neglect the health and well-being of a child because of your religious beliefs. Legislators, presented with an opportunity to protect children, punted. To say they should be ashamed doesn’t begin to do justice to the depths of my anger and enmity towards who elevate the “religious freedom” of parents over the health and safety of their children.
If you believe that the best and only way to treat a sick child is with prayer, you’re not a parent; you’re a monster and you have no business being allowed to raise children. My hope would be that when you reach the Hell you so richly deserve that you suffer in the same way you condemned your children to. You deserve nothing less.
