This story about Oregon removing legal protections for parents who rely solely on faith to treat their dying children leaves me conflicted.
Oregon lawmakers will take the first step today toward ending legal protections for parents who rely solely on faith to treat their dying children.
The bill targets the Followers of Christ, an Oregon City church with a long history of children dying from treatable medical conditions. A previous crackdown restricted but did not eliminate religious immunity from state criminal statutes.
Like I said, conflicted.
On the one hand, I think these people are probably all nuts. On the other hand, I don’t like the government interfering with religious practices. On the one hand, we don’t protect other religious practices that break the law. On the other hand, this is not an illegal practice but rather the neglect of available remedies.
On the one hand, I think I have to side with the government on this one. On the other hand, this IS Oregon we are talking about. The state where they can force you to seek medical treatment from a doctor, but the doctor can also kill you if you want.
In this schizo society, parents cannot say no to medical care needed to save a life, but the government can.
If only the Followers of Christ can get a death panel to declare their lives are not worth saving, then they should be good to go.
February 21, 2011 at 4:22 am
I think that the best way to approach it is to look at the justification. If the justification is a right to life argument, the bill is a good one. If the justification is "physicians trump religious liberty" then the bill is an evil one, even if it does some good in this case.
February 21, 2011 at 5:55 am
What these measures always make me think of is what happens, if, in the future, ESCR yields viable treatments. Will Catholics and other pro-life parents be allowed to opt out of treatments that use or are derived from embryos? Probably not.
February 21, 2011 at 7:45 am
Medical neglect is child abuse. Every other state recognizes that.
One of the legitimate roles of the state is to protect the citizenry, especially the weakest and most vulnerable. The fact that the state refuses to do so in the case of children in the womb doesn't mean we can't support when the state steps up to protect children from neglectful parents.
If I read the article correctly, Oregon is the only state that protects parents from prosecution for relying solely on faith in caring for their ill children, even their dying children. So, that Oregon is joining the other 49 states in removing that protection hardly speaks to me of a secular take-over.
February 21, 2011 at 2:19 pm
The government can force you to try and save the life of a child (even possibly one that can not be saved?), yet the government can provide you with the means and opportunity to terminate that life before it is born. Can't have it both ways.
I agree that children with treatable medical conditions should receive treatment, but then who determines what treatment is used? And if that treatment is too costly on the government nickel, what then?
February 21, 2011 at 3:00 pm
Canada trying to take the right of parents to try and keep their child alive. Oregon trying to take the right of parents to treat or not treat their child away. It all boils down to bureaucratic gov't agencies making life and death choices.
Insurance companies may deny payment but they can't deny (or impose) care. The slippery slope of these two actions is removing our rights to seek or deny care as we see fit for ourselves and our children.
FTR, I don't agree with Christian Science but I am cautious about legislation and feel that it should be handled on case-case basis like any medical neglect charge levied by DYFS/CPS.
February 21, 2011 at 3:16 pm
@scmom (Barbara)All sovereign person's rights are held in trust for them until they reach the age of legal consent, by God, by their parents, and finally by the state. Because children are minor sovereign persons, the state has the duty to intervene when the child's right to life is jeopardized, as in this case. If the religious faith was healing the child, that ought to be obvious, if not, the child must be given remedial treatment.
In the matter of abortion, the newly begotten child in the womb, is not acknowedged as a sovereign person by Roe v. Wade, the abortion decision of 1973. Only his mother's civil rights are considered and protected by Roe v. Wade.
With DNA and ultrasound, the reality of the God-given new life is evident and must be accorded all civil rights. The sovereign person in the womb, from the first momentt of life and existence as a human being constitutes our sovereignty as a nation. The newly begotten person, whose soul is created by OUR CREATOR, in innocence, legal and moral, is the standard of Justice for our nation. So, Not only does the human being's existence in the womb create and renew our nation, he is the standard for our nation in Truth, Justice and the American Way.
February 21, 2011 at 3:41 pm
Are individuals sovereign? In, "If the religious faith was healing the child, that ought to be obvious," what about when the medical treatment is not working: do we follow a different logic and continue "remedial treatment?"
February 21, 2011 at 4:04 pm
One more thought. Consent to be freely willed and given, must be unfettered by stress, duress, illness and medication, and legally consent cannot be given because of medication, so much as cough medicine which if taken three hours before signing a contract to even have one's rugs shampooed, voids and nullifies the person's consent to the contract.
A person's consent, exercised in free will, unalienable and undeniable, is to be taken into account when laws legalizing suicide, as has Oregon, are being enacted. Firstly, because the legal person is a sovereign person with the dignity of human existence. Secondly, the human being is a constituent of the government by free will and choice. This sovereign person may have vetoed our nation by repudiating his citizenship, by becoming an alien, by leaving, or by renouncing the United States. And, not necessarily by committing treason, as our Pro-Life associations have had to do, to save our founding principles: that all men are created equal as a self-evident truth and are endowed by Our Creator with unalienable rights to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Having repudiated our Creator, and our founding principles, the atheist and the abortionist have no legal standing in a court of law to demand civil rights for their cause as they have forfeited their civil rights by not according all persons unalienable civil rights, starting with the acknowledgement of Our Creator, WHO is the Supreme Sovereign Being, one God in Three Persons, Who are denied in the public square. When one person's civil rights are denied, all person's civil rights are denied. A newly begotten human being in the womb is a sovereign person who is a citizen of the human race and of the whole world. So, to deny Jesus Christ, a Happy Birthday in the public square which is owned in part and in whole by all people in joint and common tenancy, is tyranny, totalitarianism. To abort a human being already growing into his pursuit of Happiness, innocently enjoying his existence is to savage our nation, to make war against all that is holy, to make war against a nation they have repudiated.
February 21, 2011 at 4:20 pm
@ Anonymous: ABSOLUTELY. ALL HUMAN BEINGS ARE CREATED IN THE IMAGE OF THE SUPREME SOVEREIGN BEING. THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE SUPREME SOVEREIGN BEING, AS TWO WOULD PREEMPT EACH OTHER. Two kings cannot sit on the same throne. Either human beings admit to God, self-evident truths, unalienable rights endowed by our Creator or they have none.
All men (human beings) are created as sovereign beings, in innocence, moral and legal, and are therefore, the most important people in creation. To preserve and protect our very nation all sovereign persons especially minor citizens are to be nurtured and provided for, as if by Divine Providence, God Himself, for it is with God's authority, through the sovereignty of its citizens, the state assumes it sovereign authority, the power to govern.
February 21, 2011 at 4:33 pm
@Anonymous at 10:00 A.M. The government is not forbidding the parents to continue their faith healing. The government is adding remedies that are known to be beneficial, like the Jehovah's Witnesses who refuse to allow blood transfusions to save the life of a child because of religious belief and were court ordered to. Both are correct in that a person's life are in God's hands. The Catholic Church does not require extraordinary means to save life especially if the cost is overburdening. Food, hydration and nourishment are not extraordinary life support but the exercise of the corporal works of mercy…charity and so, cannot be ignored or left undone without severe judgment, as in the court case of Terry Schindler Schiavo, whose death was court ordered and enforced homicide.
February 21, 2011 at 7:42 pm
Our hospital gets a legal document when children need a blood transfusion. For Jehovah's witness it is against their religion but many times it is life saving.