You already did go off an a semantic jag.
They made a choice. The verb you are looking for is, past tense, ‘chose’.
They chose to neglect. They could have chosen to allow the hospital to render aid.
They chose to be inactive with respect to their child. Worse, they were ignorant of the Scripture, and as such doomed their child to death.
There used to be an inscription on Catholic Bibles, one I didn’t particularly agree with in general, but it was printed there nonetheless:
“Leave not the reading of the Scriptures to the ignorant, lest they rest their own destruction.”
It may apply here, in the specific, but in general I don’t agree with it.
Again, generally, I think the problem we have in this country is that we get theocracy mixed up with religion. Islam, for example, is a system of government more than it is a religion. Maybe Christian Science blurs that boundary too, in that the parents have extended their creed beyond their own personal locus, and now their boy is dead.
Jefferson said, “It neither breaks my back, nor picks my pocket what another many believes . . . “
This is probably the most effective test of the 1st amendment I can find. Islam fails it. Jizya and dhimmitude violate Jefferson’s test. Women have an even better argument.
Anyway, the overt act here is that they chose, and they now should bear the cost of that choice, maybe both before the law and before God, or their God.
The Book of James is, if I recall, part of the Canon of Scripture that Christian Scientists recognize as sacred.