Casualty of faith healing - Madeline Neumann

I worked at a hospital a few years back where they brought in this boy who desperately needed open heart surgery or he would surely die. Problem was that Mom and Dad were Jehova's Witnesses' who are virulently opposed to any kind of blood transfusion.Well, the boy would have lost too much blood without donated blood of his type on hand. They refused, citing some obscure, completely misinterpreted passage of the bible and thus following some invented rule for God's sake in the absence of God.The boy died and rage spread throughout the hospital because it wasn't that the doctors did the best for him and he simply died anyway, it was that it was totally preventable in the first place. That boy could have easily lived.Anger also spread because in the eyes of the law, religion is an almost untouchable thing, so sacred that no single human may usurp its authority. I believe in the establishment clause advocating the separation of church and state, but clearly some people do not understand what it means.All that thing says is that they will not infringe upon the other and that no special status will be given to any religion. That's the gist. The simplified, layman's version isn't much more simple than defining it legally.What it sure as shit doesn't mean is that radical Muslims can "practice" their Jihad on thousands of unsuspecting civilians. It doesn't mean that Navajo's can take a shitload of Peyote off their reservation. It doesn't mean that practitioners of Santa Ria can decapitate chickens and sprinkle its blood all over your doorstep to either ward off or summon evil spirits. And it doesn't mean that because little Jimmy's parents are Jehova's Witnesses that the doctors can't actually help him.Guess what??? Did you know that it has nothing to do with the freedom of religion, either this case or the one stated in the OP? It has to do with the fact that the child was a minor.No one can legally do a thing to child without the expressed permission of their parents. That is only negated when the parents are abusive and so lose their custodial or guardianship rights to the minor.The best and most appropriate question for this thread is: What constitutes abuse and where should the line begin and end with parental rights versus government welfare rights?

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"The problem with Socialism is you eventually run out of other people's money." --Margaret Thatcher--

This is a tough situation for me because both sides have pro's and con's. On the one hand it is a dangerous thing for the State to decide what is best for someone else's child. It's also a dangerous thing for the child not to have the State step in.I fear the day that parental rights are stripped in a one-size-fits-all form of government. But at the same time, no one can deny the fact that some parents are horrible and for the sake of the welfare of that child, (s)he needs to be rescued.The story in the OP or my own personal experience are not isolated incidents. As you said, exactly this situation has arisen here more than once. Touche' That's another tough one where pro's and con's exist. Children often times make bad decisions. If they had their way, they'd eat nothing but ice cream and candy because they couldn't possibly begin to understand the danger in it.Any child would reasonably be scared of surgery. They may not have the wherewithal to fully comprehend that if they don't have the surgery, they could die.But children are their own people with their own mind and they do have a right to be heard and to express their own fears and concerns.It's one of those damned if you, damned if don't conundrums. Edited by Hyroglyphx, : No reason given.

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"The problem with Socialism is you eventually run out of other people's money." --Margaret Thatcher--

Sounds like a reasonable solution in theory.

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"The problem with Socialism is you eventually run out of other people's money." --Margaret Thatcher--