View full sizeJeffrey and Marci Beagley are on trial for criminally negligent homicide in the death of their son, Neil beagley. Their trial began on Jan. 19 and jurors are expected to give the verdict today.Posted on 02/02/2010 3:15:29 PM PST by jazusamo
Faith-healing and Oregon law 1995: Lobbied by the Christian Science Church, legislators introduce a religious defense to Oregon's homicide statutes, protecting parents who try to heal their children solely with prayer and faith-healing rituals. Parents who can prove to a judge or jury that faith governed their actions become immune from criminal liability, just as others could assert a claim of self-defense or extreme emotional disturbance.
1997: Again at the behest of Christian Scientists, Oregon legislators add religious shields to the state's first- and second-degree manslaughter statutes.
1998: Citing legal immunities for faith healers, Clackamas County District Attorney Terry Gustafson declines to prosecute Followers of Christ church members whose 11-year-old boy, Bo Phillips, died from untreated diabetes. As their son suffered for days, the parents withheld medical treatment in favor of prayer. The boy's death sparks a statewide controversy and calls to strike religious exemptions from Oregon law.
1999: After months of debate, legislators restrict parents' legal defense for treating sick children only with prayer. The new law eliminates religious protections in cases of second-degree manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide and first- and second-degree criminal mistreatment.
2001-2008: Police respond to the deaths of five children, including Ava Worthington and Neil Beagley, whose parents belong to Followers of Christ.
2009: Raylene and Carl Brent Worthington become the first Oregon parents prosecuted under the 1999 law, charged with manslaughter and criminal mistreatment in the death of their 15-month-old daughter. Raylene, the daughter of Jeffrey and Marci Beagley, is acquitted on all charges; Carl Worthington is convicted on the lesser charge.
2010: Jeffrey and Marci Beagley are tried for criminally negligent homicide in the death of their 16-year old son, Neil.
View full sizeJeffrey and Marci Beagley are on trial for criminally negligent homicide in the death of their son, Neil beagley. Their trial began on Jan. 19 and jurors are expected to give the verdict today.Ping!
These laws and court prosecutions are neatly placing the government’s foot inside the door of the family home.
Next step: what if parents go to the doctor and hospital and pursue various conventional treatments, but finally are faced with treatment choices A and B, where they want to choose A NOT B, but ma government says A is not the best choice, so unless they choose B they are in violation of the law.
While I may not agree with these parent’s particular exclusion of fairly standard medicine, I have to think about what if I wanted to take some course of action that they did not agree with ? Would I want to be dictated to ? When ma government crosses the line of dictating choices WITHIN a family (which has been getting more out-of-control for 100 years), America is crossing a dangerous, dangerous line.
Like, what if you are forced into a hospice since you are “too costly to the government” ? And any other option is criminalized ?
Americans better start getting extremely angry and voting out EVERYONE who does not 100% agree that ma government needs to GET OUT OF OUR HOMES.
On another politically-correct note: what if these folks were muslim ? I’d like to know if anyone has ever heard of a Western government anywhere in the past 10 years siding against muslim parents, other than the 1 single case of the 17 year-old girl, whose case was going to be moot when she reached the age of majority in months anyway.
That is why this simply more left-wing anti-Christian tactics. Now, it’s like it’s always been, it’s not like the commies really care much about Christianity, it’s just that dictatorial regimes always find it convenient to stomp out any organized groups other than there own party or ones that they are using.
These laws and court prosecutions are neatly placing the government’s foot inside the door of the family home.
Next step: what if parents go to the doctor and hospital and pursue various conventional treatments, but finally are faced with treatment choices A and B, where they want to choose A NOT B, but ma government says A is not the best choice, so unless they choose B they are in violation of the law.
While I may not agree with these parent’s particular exclusion of fairly standard medicine, I have to think about what if I wanted to take some course of action that they did not agree with ? Would I want to be dictated to ? When ma government crosses the line of dictating choices WITHIN a family (which has been getting more out-of-control for 100 years), America is crossing a dangerous, dangerous line.
Like, what if you are forced into a hospice since you are “too costly to the government” ? And any other option is criminalized ?
Americans better start getting extremely angry and voting out EVERYONE who does not 100% agree that ma government needs to GET OUT OF OUR HOMES.
On another politically-correct note: what if these folks were muslim ? I’d like to know if anyone has ever heard of a Western government anywhere in the past 10 years siding against muslim parents, other than the 1 single case of the 17 year-old girl, whose case was going to be moot when she reached the age of majority in months anyway.
That is why this simply more left-wing anti-Christian tactics. Now, it’s like it’s always been, it’s not like the commies really care much about Christianity, it’s just that dictatorial regimes always find it convenient to stomp out any organized groups other than there own party or ones that they are using.
I’m not buying your “what if” argument.
What if the son of these parents died because they didn’t seek medical care for him and what if the 15 month old granddaughter of these two died because their daughter and son-in-law refused medical care for her.
In the above two what ifs that’s exactly what happened and those children are dead.
The law in Oregon was changed in 1999 because of this church and the number of their children in a graveyard.
I’m not buying your “what if” argument.
What if the son of these parents died because they didn’t seek medical care for him and what if the 15 month old granddaughter of these two died because their daughter and son-in-law refused medical care for her.
In the above two what ifs that’s exactly what happened and those children are dead.
The law in Oregon was changed in 1999 because of this church and the number of their children in a graveyard.
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Doctors are not always right... I am very uncomfortable with the state mandating that we must follow their advice. I work with paramedics doctors and nurses on a regular basis. I know a dirty little secret from first hand experience. They all exaggerate on a regular basis to get people to follow their advice. Many of them out and out lie. Generally they do this because they think that it is in their patent’s best interest, but many of them also do it for their own convenience.
I can’t speak to your experience but for years I worked with paramedics in contact with a doctor or nurse and can’t remember a single experience of a patient being lied to, you’ve made a very broad statement.
There will always be people who will neglect their children.
No law can fix that.
Why does “big medicine” and the government _always_ want to either:
A) DENY care
or
B) FORCE care
(answer my own question: it’s the former when there is no money to take and the latter when there is)
People have a right to refuse care, contrary to the current politically correct tendency to think that everybody needs to just “let go” and let “modern medicine” “treat them” whenever it wants to and however it wants to without questioning the noble authority of the benevolent masters in government and medicine.
Americans have been taught to think that they need to tell other people what to do because we are such wonderful world citizens; we are _so_ enlightened, hence, we are always right. It’s like the Haiti adoptions; how high-and-mighty are we to assume that we are justified in plucking children out of another country to give them such a wonderful life here ? What right does one have to take orphans from another country ? What if someone did this in the U.S., that is, take children out of an orphanage ? Would not our courts have something to say about that ? Where is the months-long legal procedure in Haiti on these adoptions ? Oh, it’s an “emergency” we just need to get these oh so cute little orphans out of their country so for the next 20 years we can have all our neighbors see us parade around town with those cute little orphans that we so valiantly adopted. They need love, and these modern Americans do love to love their kids.
It may make one look good to be so concerned about our neighbors that we start forcing things on them for their own good, but how will we feel when years from now, as we age, some helpful young neighbor is forcing - I mean helping - us. Time to take your medicine...
There is a common concept in our society and in the law and country in general for the last 100 years or so that the government will protect children, even from abuse by their own parents. If you want to change that make your case.
I worked when I was 7 years old - is that abuse ?
How the hell would I know?
Make my case ? Some people need to be on the receiving end of the governments “protection” before they can understand that “the government” is no friend of parents, families and least of all children.
You tell me just how terrible it was for children of the revolution, say in 1780. Tell me just how families were falling apart. Got news for you pal, families back then did as good as families can do and it’s been downhill ever since.
This “common concept” has failed utterly miserably; take a ride to Newark, NJ and you will see the failure firsthand.
Better yet, have your school’s guidance counselor work with your child so they quit high school - without you being aware and unable to stop it once the decision was made.
If you’re trying to sell me that the “government” is anything more than politicians pandering for any cheap vote they can get by saying how we need more money for the kids, and government bureaucrats run amok, you’re going to have a long wait getting me to buy it.
Exactly !
Since outsider would not know, an outsider must not force their way in.
people kill their children, torture them, starve them, withhold medical care and let them die, lock them up in rooms and chain them in place, have sex with them,shall I go on. I want the government to take that role. Just like I want a police presence in my city. Yes the government can overreact and be nosy, but children have to be protected or more of them will die from abuse..
Well said...Children are the most vulnerable people in our society. The abuses you have listed are all too true and add to that the brainwashing that starts from the time they can first think and speak by parents that put themselves before those children.
Those kids have every right to life just as the unborn do. Hopefully the day will come when they’ll all be protected.
I also support lasws that require school (home or otherwise, statutory rape laws, curfews, child labor laws, etc. All enforced by our evil government and local police.
We show up at a motor vehicle accident. A young lady has rear ended another vehicle. Her airbag didn't deploy, there is no visible damage to either vehicle, but she is a woman who has her seat adjusted so that her chest is only a couple of inches from the steering wheel. She is complaining of chest pain. She has no other complaints or visible injuries.
She doesn't want to be transported because she has no health insurance and cannot afford the $1000 ride. Our fire department protocol demands that we advise her to be transported by ambulance because of the mechanism of injury... she was in a car accident. Further complicating things is her complaint of chest pain. This is something we take very seriously. The paramedic on-scene starts telling her that she must be transported because even though her neck doesn't hurt, it still could be broken and she could be walking around tomorrow and become paralyzed. She is still not buying that, so to let her go we have to get her to sign a release of responsibility. For that we have to get a base station doctor's approval.
We get on the phone with the base station doctor. We tell him she doesn't want to go. He wants to talk to her. He parrots something else the paramedics have been telling her. That chest pain she is feeling might not just be from her breasts hitting the steering wheel. She might have damaged her heart. She could die from one of the big vessels being torn loose and suddenly rupturing, or she might have bruised her heart and that could cause some sort of arrhythmia which could cause her heart to go into fibrillation or just stop beating all together. So we with the doctor successfully scare her into taking an ambulance ride to the hospital. We put her head in a C-collar, and tape and strap her to a backboard. Of course she gets triaged at the hospital and ends up spending two or three hours strapped to that very uncomfortable board. They finally X-ray her and send her on her way with a $1000 bill from the ambulance company and a $1400 bill from the hospital.
What were the chances that this person really had a broken neck? I'd guess around ten million to one. What are the chances that she had actually damaged her heart? Probably the same ten million to one. Did the doctor and paramedic lie to the young lady to get her to comply with protocol? There is no question about that. Did they lie? You might have to analyze each word in a court of law to satisfy some people, but in many cases in my view they cross the line from exaggerating to lying fairly early on if the patient looks like they are not going to cooperate.
The incident you refer to is disgraceful and if that is the norm it is outrageous.
Our paramedics were loathe to have a person sign a release if they truly believed they needed medical care but the base stations doctor was not required for the patient to sign the release. If a persons judgment was impaired by drugs or alcohol and they clearly needed further care a LEO could arrest to enable them to be transported however I never personally saw that happen.
If ER’s are that hard up for business something definitely needs to be done and if the paramedics exaggerate or lie action should be taken against them also.
I’ll only qualify this because I don’t know your circumstances. Our paramedics were fire personnel, not private ambulances and I never once saw them lie or exaggerate in hundreds of incidents.
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