Every time I hear these stories, I’m horrified: parents who are so besotted with their dumb-ass religion, that they watch and pray and do nothing more as their children die of easily treated diseases. Type I diabetes symptoms go away with a shot of insulin; appendicitis can be quickly treated with a simple surgery; food poisoning leads to vomiting leads to a ruptured esophagus leads to painful death; childhood cancers are not so easily treatable, but dying slowly of blossoming tumors strangling your organs, without even so much as palliative care, is a misery. But the parents watch, and are no doubt suffering themselves, but the suffering of their children is less important to them than doubting the power of their nonexistent god to cure them. Strangely, never in the history of the world has a god magically intervened to make a cancer disappear, or an acute infection to vanish, or diabetes to simply go away.
So here’s a heart-rending and familiar story of ignorant faith healers betraying their own children, in the name of God.
The investigation led to the Peaceful Valley Cemetery outside of Boise, where Tilkin made the startling discovery that among the 553 marked graves at the cemetery, 144 appeared to be those of children, more than 25 percent.
Martin says a more extensive review of burial records at Peaceful Valley using the Idaho State Archives, obituaries and interviews with family and next of kin shows that among the 604 people buried at the cemetery, including unmarked graves, 208 are children, nearly 35 percent. Those findings are documented on the Find a Grave website, an online database of cemetery records. While the graves of deceased children in the cemetery date back to 1905, 149 children, more than 70 percent, were buried there in or after 1972, the year that Idaho enacted a law providing a religious defense to manslaughter.
You read that right. Idaho has a law allowing you to let your children die of neglect, if you have a religious reason to do so. They contrast Idaho with Oregon, which has removed the religious loophole — Oregon prosecutes parents who abuse their children with loving neglect. And that’s the least that ought to be done.
Now, though, look at your state.
The redder the state, the better; the black states, which include Idaho, Iowa, and Ohio, allow religious exemptions for negligent homicide, manslaughter, or capital murder. Jephthah would have been right at home in those states…killing your child is OK if you do it to please God.
I notice that Minnesota, like Utah and Texas, has a religious exemption for felony crimes against children. That’s not right. We should be following the example of Oregon.
In 2011, the state eliminated all remaining religious exemptions for denying medical care. Within a few months, Followers of Christ members Timothy and Rebecca Wyland were convicted of criminal mistreatment for allowing a growth the size of a baseball on their infant daughter’s face to go untreated. They were sentenced to 90 days in jail and eventually lost custody of their daughter. While six states have now struck all religious protections for crimes against children, Oregon’s reforms have shown to be the most sweeping in their transformation. With the Rossiters’ conviction, the state has now won every faith-healing child death case it has prosecuted.
Advocates like Martin believe that without publicity and stiff legal repercussions, children will continue to suffer and die at the hands of faith-healing parents in Idaho. And they are praying that they will find a way to make the issue resonate with lawmakers and the public in the state.
Religious exemptions for capital murder? What the actual fuck?
Actually I’m rather confused. Can’t they still be charged with a federal crime, even if the state lets them off the hook with religious exemption?
Also, it’s quite bizarre how that map is all over the place. There’s no recognizable pattern at all.
True, but in the insulated bubble of faith healing communities stories about divine healings are common, passed around in the echo chamber of the Truly Informed. “This really happened to a friend of a friend’s mother’s cousin.” Or even “this happened to me.” So if nothing else their sense of probability is very screwed up.
Fuck yes, Massachusetts. Slightly disappointed with the rest of New England. As usual, disgusted with the country as a whole.
From Wiki:
Short answer, highly unlikely.
From the article: “What’s more absurd, according to Swan, is that the state’s laws inadvertently promote the most extreme behavior among faith-healing parents because of how they’re written: Parents can lose their religious protections the minute they use any other means of care beyond spiritual treatment to help cure a child.
“If the parent combines prayer with orange juice or a cool bath to bring down a fever,” Swan says, “the parent loses the exemption.””
I have a different proposal for states that want to keep the “religious exemption” open. Instead of losing the exemption as soon as the parents try any real treatment for their children, how about they lose it the minute they try any real treatment for themselves? Wear glasses? You’ll be charged with murder if your child dies in “faith healing”. Use a Tylenol when you have a headache? Same. If they claim god will cure their children’s ills, why don’t they have faith in god’s ability to take away their poor vision and headaches (and other dangerous conditions) as well? Make it retroactive: if you child dies after “prayer treatment” and you EVER use ANY medical care, even quack naturopathy, you’ll be charged with murder. That’s the only way you’ll get these people to take their children’s lives seriously.
Courtesy of Lexis Nexis, the Arkansas Code, Title 5, uh, section 5-10-101. Capital murder.
http://web.lexisnexis.com/research/retrieve?_m=09fc42279ce055fdc7c80b9b32b439c6&docnum=1&_fmtstr=FULL&_startdoc=1&wchp=dGLbVzk-zSkAz&_md5=1ae26b6ca9e22c6ccc38e8ca63662e5a
(a) 9 (B) says:
(emphasis present in source text).
I have no idea what this means in practise, of course… IANAL. But seriously, what the fuck? Is it really just fine to exhibit “extreme indifference to the value of human life” so long as the victim was under 14, and god told you it was okay?
I read the Minnesota laws that cover civil and criminal religious exemptions. They do seem to contradict the the child protection laws, but IANAL. It pretty much says that parents who believe that faith healing is valid cannot be charged with neglect for holding this belief. However, it also states that any parent of caregiver who knows. or suspects that the childs health is endangered by such practice, and allows a sick child to be harmed or die, is automatically guilty of a felony for failing to report. Huh?
Unbelievable.
It’s not inconsistent to think your child’s health problem is caused by a demon possession, let’s say, while your headache has a natural source. So it wouldn’t demonstrate that they really don’t have such religious beliefs or whatever you think it’s supposed to show. And even if they did really believe it and applied it consistently throughout their lives in ways that satisfy you, that doesn’t fucking matter.
There is no situation where this is okay, so there should be no get-out-of-jail-free card. No matter how much you self-flagellate, make yourself sick or do any other fucking thing, this is still wrong and should be illegal. Don’t give them loopholes, simply because some state (certainly not everyone in it) supposedly wants to keep having a loophole. Because there’s no good reason for it. The end. That’s my proposal.
That’s a really interesting geographic distribution, in that it doesn’t seem to be a red state/blue state divide. States like Nebraska aren’t noted for being bastions of liberalism like Oregon and Massachusetts, and Ohio and Iowa are pretty middle of the road* when it comes to many things.
* Which is to say that they have pockets of both liberalism and conservatism.
Wait, wait…. I feel SICK with confusion…
Can this be fucking serious? I did not know there are actual legal EXEMPTIONS for these things.
And the confusing bit is that they’re not even coming up with euphemisms. They’re literally calling them what they are: medical neglect, endangerment, etc.
Great choice of words, PZ. “Besotted.”
I myself am besotted with my kids, as I feel all parents should be. The results, I argue, are a whole lot more appealing.
@11: It is my understanding (possibly wrong) that the argument in these cases is not that the children are demonically possessed but rather that the parents believe that god will heal them if they pray and thus that their prayers are evidence that they are not neglecting the child but rather are treating the child in a culturally appropriate manner. This argument, I would claim, is suceptible to the counter argument that if they really believed that medical problems could be treated by prayer they’d subject themselves to the same “treatment” and the fact that they don’t is evidence that they don’t believe it. Yes, of course I’d rather all states made laws like Oregon’s preferably without a slew of dead kids first, but some places they’re just not going to go for that and so a law that protects “religious freedom” but demands evidence that it really is about religion and not, say, a parent killing a kid and then looking for a way out, might have some effect.
Or not. There are people out there arguing that a man who kept his adopted daughter in a cage and starved her to death is a “hero” so maybe they’re just not reachable.
Good grief, don’t let this map get into the wrong hands.
Next thing you know, a completely black slate.
Saad
There are religious exemptions for a lot of things. Want to run a day care but don’t want to have to meet minimum health and safety standards? Affiliate with a church. Take the kids on a field trip on a hot day and forget one of them in the car for 8 hours? No worries!
dianne:
Fundie Christians who have a specific view of what “faith healing” means aren’t the only religious people who could get such an exemption. Besides, even in that case, they can make up any arbitrary intentions they want for their fictional deity, because it doesn’t exist, does literally nothing, and can’t be refuted on the basis of empirical evidence. They can say it wants this one day, that the next, and magically tells them any set of incoherent and inconsistent and mysteriously-working rules whatsoever. Because we already let all of that bullshit in, and I guess somebody somewhere decided it’s too late to toss it out. Why ruin a good thing?
Look, it makes no ethical difference whatsoever, whether they really believe or don’t really believe. This is, at best, a talking point for you when arguing with someone who has such views, which is not say it’s ethical or that it’s a reasonable basis for public policy. You do get that, right, and that you’re arguing as if that’s not the case? One more thing I could add to the pile is that, even if somehow it did make sense, how would this be enforceable? Brain scanners for everyone? If you’re asking us to have these laws and not to apply them consistently, then what is that supposed to say about your own position?
Well, you say they won’t go for it, so sure, we may as well save ourselves the trouble of actually fighting for it. Liberals do love their pointless compromises, so I’m genuinely worried your “solution” might be taken seriously.
Quite honestly, that’s the last thing I’m worried about. People who genuinely believe in faith healing tend to not make it too long. Especially if they also handle snakes*. Those that are simply using this law as an excuse to kill their children and get away with it won’t allow consideration of any proposal that might jeopardize their safety.
I have doubts about organizing the liberal base of Idaho, enamored of pointless compromise or not, and getting the law changed in any way at all. I don’t see any way this law is getting changed without national action, maybe getting religious exemption laws declared unconstitutional or something. But if you can get the vast number of liberals in Idaho to rise up and work together to change the law, go for it.
*True story: Woman in snake handling church gets bit. Her husband refuses to take her to doctor because faith. She dies. He is about to be prosecuted for manslaughter or something similar. He says “god will decide” and plunges his hand into a bag of snakes. God decides. Not in his favor. (Ok, so the “god decides” bit isn’t actually true.)
I’m confused about something: do these exemptions only hold for the behavior of parents to their children or can you literally get away with murdering a stranger if you declare that you did it for religious reasons?
Does not the US Constitution forbid States from making laws favouring particular religions?
In which case, shouldn’t followers of Quetzlcoatl be able to demand that the governor be sacrificed at the end of his or her term as the gods demand? It’s part of their faith…(No, that’s not a serious proposal either. OTOH, the “satanists” did have a certain amount of success in Florida…)
One of the things a Nebraskan can be proud of! Of course, we have Ernie Chambers, a spot of light in a sea of darkness. They passed a term limit law to make him go away. He sat out a session, and came roaring back. He is the reason why we have no exemptions – how he manages to talk Nebraska legislators into passing some of these laws I’ll never figure out. I’ll just be glad he does it.
So the same act by a religious kook and a neglectful dirtbag…one gets jailtime and another gets a pat on the back and a “that’s too bad.”??
You sure about that? There ARE cases of “spontaneous remission”, that I’m sure the god botherers would label “miraculous”. It’s just our atheistic non-belief that rules out miraculous intervention.
but, but, but, ummm. sorry to dispute the reasonable interpretation of “no god has ever intervened…” I just got so inundated with the label “miracle man”, for my unprecedented recovery from a severe “incident”, that I assume it comes naturally to the godbotherers to label things outside their imagining as “miraculous”. tsk, tsk, tsk, just cuz it’s unexplainable doesn’t mean it’s miraculous (in the sacred sense), I prefer ‘miraculous’ in the ‘low probability’ sense. But “faith healers” depend on these ‘spontaneous remissions’ to boost their “cure” stats.
It doesn’t seem to matter much to the fundie religious community if sick the child dies. They just chalk the death up to god’s will.
Would any of these parents happen to be pro-life?
Anym’s post at #8 is probably typical of these legal exemptions–the godbotherer has to be a parent, guardian or ‘acting in loco parentis‘ to the kid.
Now, that last one? That’s scary as fuck. There’s at least one SCOTUS justice (Thomas) who has made it clear he believes the doctrine of in loco parentis pretty much overrules all of a kid’s civil liberties. Read that way, under the law in pst #8, the school administrators could, in a district dominated by religious zealots, choose to withhold actual medical treatment from a student in exchange for praying really hard.
Further to Saad @ 27, does this mean that abortion is totally fine as long as it’s for religious reasons?
Saad: Probably all of them. After all, abortion would just be another example of using manmade medicine to intervene with God’s will.
Sastra wrote:
And like any good game of Telephone, the final retelling of the story is far more fantastic than the mediocre story that spawned it.
@ freemage # 30
Then why don’t we do them a favor and not let the use computers, care, planes, phones, houses built with anything but their bare hands, deny them all form of transportation or medical care. Get shot, no need for a doctor or even a paramedic to remove the bullet that would be man intervening on god’s will. Need a car ride to get to your job? No you need to pray to god each day to be miraculously transported to your job. Starving because you have no food? Sorry you can’t buy food, it was farmed with machines which is man intervening on god’s will. Drowning because you don’t know how to swim, sorry if I pulled you out I would be intervening on god’s will. Pray for god to pull you out.
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This all is, of course, sarcasm. I have a story for this though that tells a pleasant opposite to this and shows that there is hope.
I am reposting this story from The Atheist Experience blog as it is relevant here too. I lived through this and it is pretty awesome that I did. A few weeks ago I met a guy and his brother and his brother is the same age as my cousin from this story. The brother also had this procedure as he was part of the same experimental group.
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(FYI I am using pseudonyms even though this is a true story, my name on here is a pseudonym so it makes sense).
I have a cousin whom I will call Martha, she grew up Roman Catholic like me. She married a man whom I will call John who came from a Baptist protestant group that was very anti-evolution. Actually they were pretty much against anything that demonstrated factual incorrectness of the Bible, pretty much all anti-science. I can’t imagine what my cousin saw in him given that John did not even like him or his kids going to the Doctor as he knew the vast majority of biology is based upon evolution and he did not want evolution “winning out.” For years at family functions he talked about the Bible being “over 60 love letters from God.” (Which is a weird idea, love letters that include beheading and raping innocent people?). Johns was ok when Martha was pregnant going to Doctors but did not want her having things like ultrasound images. When his first 2 kids (a boy and a girl in that order) were young he fought against them even learning any science (he was ok with math as he had some background in accounting).
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When his wife, my cousin, got pregnant with their third son (I will call him George) he had a severe heart defect that is a very rare genetic disability. The medical staff was almost certain that the boy would be dead within weeks of birth if not for experimental heart surgery. The doctors had some ideas but initially John protested when he learned that the surgical procedure was based upon evolutionary studies of pigs that indicated pigs had undergone similar evolutionary pressures and had hearts similar to ours. It would be tricky and the boy may not last, plus George would need follow up surgeries and to be given special drugs for years to prevent his body from rejecting the tissues.
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John talked to his minister and the minister said that John should be ashamed that they would even consider a medical procedure like that, God would provide and John would be shunned by his fellow churchgoers (actually that was an idle threat, the parish had an attitude with him but nothing as bad as what the minister threatened). John finally bit the bullet. He did not want to anger God as he thought might be the case but he did not want his son to die and he had to try. Little George got the surgeries for years but they always knew any time that he might not make it. John still was very preachy about his religion but whenever someone brought up creationism vs. evolution at a family event John shut his mouth. John only ever thanked God for saving his son but he damn well stopped preaching against evolution when it was brought up. He often did so with a grimmace on his face like he wanted to be right but knew that if he had pushed the issue that his son would be dead. He still contributed to religious groups that push against evolutionary teaching, but only for a while.
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That was 21 years ago. In George’s teenage years it was obvious that he was going to survive even though most of his heart is made from various parts of pig hearts and he has to see specialists. During that time Martha found evidence that John had been cheating on her. Interesting how a preachy man like this (this is all too common nowadays) that spoke against sin was committing adultery himself. My cousin has since divorced him and got a good deal of money and is with another man.
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George is alive and well and is a great public speaker. He goes out speaking to other children and groups about how his heart is made form parts of a pig (a Frankenheart). Now one could say that this would not have happened were it not for John’s attitude, but that is a lie. It damn well could have happened had John not been an asshole.
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Now this may just sound like an anecdote, but I lived through this. There are children of families with BOTH parents have the original attitude of John and his minister exist in these protestant communities, and they don’t change for fear of angering god the way John did.
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Some don’t want their children to die and that touches them.
That reminds me of a story My Mother told me. She was a visiting nurse and her work generated many amusing stories. Everything from dry eyeball sockets to Mort who was a patient of a world renowned doctor who specialized in internal itches.
Well anyway she would have these visits with Baptist couples and the wife would have to take on some of the husbands care. My mother would try to teach the wife the schedule for the medicine and the wife would say god will provide. Which would be frustrating when the medicine needs to be taken religiously. My mother would say god is not going to come down and give your husband the medicine. This would usually shake up enough to pay attention to what needs to be done.
I think that a lot of people commenting on this issue here, have had their heads “stuck in the sand” sort of speaking. The faith healing exception clauses of many states has bee covered in many blogs. Search Jerry Coyne’s “web site” for example.
I think that these exceptions are due primarily to the Christian Science faith. This is going to disgust everyone reading here; it does me. In some instances at least, a Christian Science “healer” can be paid for with Medicare.
Someone at TAM this year said it best I think, that the parents faith should not br allowed to make martyrs of their children.
George
@dianne Clever suggestion.
People who believe in faith healing should put their own health to the test.
I mean, Mark 16 17-18 is very clear:
They should go amaze the world with their poison-drinking abilities.
Now THAT would be witnessing!
Also, the idea that people would use such legislation to get rid of their child is revolting. Again, brain block.
I feel like I should make explicit something the article only sort of hints at: The tightening of the religious loopholes was the direct result of dealing with these exact same assholes, the Followers of Christ, for 25 to 30 years. Hopefully Idaho will follow suit, because all we really managed here in 2011 was to drive them over the border, like the article alludes to.
They’ll say they are suffering, but when the child dies they will hotfoot it down to the local church where they can smile bravely while their peers congratulate them on the strength of their faith. It’s an ego thing.
seconded.
sounds more like a Munchausen’s by proxy thing.
I grew up in rural Herefordshire, where several evangelical groups operate. One summer, in the the early 1990s, in the next village along the police and community health services had to intervene when parents refused to bury their 14 year old son after he drowned in the river on their property. They had been praying for his resurrection for 5 days. In August.
Around the same time a farmer was trapped in a combine harvester. His family didn’t call the emergency services. They knelt and prayed as he bled out.
In both cases it was apparently decided that prosecution “was not in the public interest”.
After overcoming my initial revulsion at these laws, and wondering how many countries in Europe have comparable laws in place (which is not unlikely since AFAIK it is possible for Jehova’s Witnesses to refuse blood transfusion for their children) It also struck me that the colour scheme of the map feels the wrong way around.
In a map with colour gradients like the one shown here, red regions are usually “this is the worst place”. While on this map, red actually means they’re the best place.
For a moment, I thought this map came from a fundy source that argues in favour of letting children die in the name of woo.
Finally, that little ad on the left has disappeared and I can actually access this blog! Alas, I have nothing to say. Carry on.
That’s the problem with religion – you can either have internal consistency or positive real-world outcomes. Not both.
Incidentally, SBM reports about another case, this time in Canada. An 11 year old (most certainly) dying from leukemia after a court ruling favoring “aboriginal medicine” over actual medicine. (I did not read all the comments here but checked some search terms… sorry if covered before)
Ah, but you see, as an atheist, you lack the SOOPER SEKRIT DECODER RING that tells you when something is God’s Will, and when it’s okay for you to act. That these things tend to be in accord to what makes life easier for the believer but permit them to enforce draconian rules on others (including to the point of harming their own children) should be simply seen as a sign of how godly they are.
*Provides bucket*
@freemage # 46
Actually I have the scret decoder ring, it told me to “Be sure ot drink your Ovaltine.” :-)
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The story that I reposted in #33 is the one that I tell (FYI, it is first hand, I went through this) to many a creationist believer. That story does sometimes get believers to see that it is not about taking away your precious beliefs but about saving lives. I often reference Kenneth Miller when discussing that story. I’d be more than happy with them continuing to be believers as long as they would do away with the right wing bullshit and crationism. I don’t mind religion, but the negative effects of religion. Of course as someone said on The Athiest Experience board in response to that (metaphorically speaking obviously), if you take the gloves, the bat, the uniform, and the bases from baseball, at which point do you really stop calling it baseball?
As Sastra and twas brillig (stevem) have pointed out, the believers certainly have lots of anecdotes to share that seemingly support their point. A better, more clear-cut example that I’ve seen used a lot is “Why won’t God heal amputees?” Why is it always variable, individual conditions?
Oh, and I didn’t think I’d ever say this but “Yay North Carolina!” ;-)
The Friendly Atheist has more reports on Idaho and this.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/11/18/in-idaho-parents-who-commit-faith-based-homicide-are-immune-from-prosecution/
It’s quite telling if the child death rate per location mirrors the laws allowing it. That would indicate that the parents, on the whole, don’t really have much conviction to their beliefs – they’re perfectly happy to say “it’s all up to God” and risk their children’s lives, but as soon as they might face legal repercussions for their negligence, they’ll haul them off to the doctor.
If you kill your children by denying them medical care, it’s “freedom of religion”. But if you kill your children by denying them food, it’s child abuse. Someone somewhere needs to file suit and claim that deny one is as criminal as denying the other.
If adults want to deny treatment for themselves, no problem. But the right of a child to live should and must supercede the parent’s “freedom of religion”. Until children reach adulthood and can make autonomous decisions, no religion should ever have the ability to endanger them.