Posted on 02/14/2015 3:53:22 AM PST by don-o
Using a Loudon County case as a backdrop, the Tennessee Supreme Court on Friday upheld for the first time a parent’s right to choose faith over medicine — even if a child dies as a result.
“This is a case of first impression,” Justice Gary R. Wade wrote in the court’s decision upholding the constitutionality of Tennessee’s Spiritual Treatment Exemption Act.
(Excerpt) Read more at knoxnews.com ...
Looks like a case of nuance here. Like the penalty for the mother, based upon other unspecified things, would have been worse if not for the exemption.
Not just a book, but an whole LIBRARY of worms here.
If parents decide to use faith healing, or holistic remedies for their minor child’s illness, the state will prosecute in the case of the child’s further illness, injury or death.
If the parents are forced to use the state’s approved medical treatment and then the child’s condition worsens or he/she dies, do the parents have a case against the state?
If the parents cannot afford the state’s approved medical treatment but the state insists their child receive said treatment while the parents are forced into a payment program, and the child still dies, who is on the hook for the bills?
If the state wants to prevail over the choices of the parents, will the state remove the child from the custody of the parents and put the child through the state approved medical treatment while prosecuting the parents for child neglect or abuse?
Will parents’ choices for their children’s medical treatment only be preempted for cancer? Or will it be extended to the flu, or whether or not a cut warranted stitches? Or what diet should be used to combat obesity?
Where will the state, in its never ending push to have more and more control over the affairs of the people, draw the line on what decisions people can make?
If a parent denies needed medicine or medical treatment from a child and the child dies as a result. That parent is guilty of at least negligent homicide if not strait out murder.
You are a statist.
You are anti-family.
You are a democrat.
Could food be declared a medicine? If a parent does not feed their child and the child starves to death would not the parent be prosecuted? Maybe she could pray to get out of jail.
> If parents decide to use faith healing, or holistic remedies for their minor child’s illness, the state will prosecute in the case of the child’s further illness, injury or death.
This comes under a “common sense” concept. For example, vegan parents who insist on a vegan diet for their baby, even though it is severely underweight and “obviously” malnourished. Common sense also applies to sickness that an average person could identify as emergent. It doesn’t really matter if parents are very stupid or fanatical.
> If the parents are forced to use the state’s approved medical treatment and then the child’s condition worsens or he/she dies, do the parents have a case against the state?
Varies. Usually only if there was misdiagnosis or malpractice. Legal arguments for this deal in percentages, such as odds the child would die without treatment vs. the chance the child would live with treatment.
> If the parents cannot afford the state’s approved medical treatment but the state insists their child receive said treatment while the parents are forced into a payment program, and the child still dies, who is on the hook for the bills?
I have never heard of this situation. Typically, such parents would be considered indigent, and outside of a substantial windfall, like winning the lottery, care for their child would not come at a cost to them.
> If the state wants to prevail over the choices of the parents, will the state remove the child from the custody of the parents and put the child through the state approved medical treatment while prosecuting the parents for child neglect or abuse?
Only if the parents either reject the court ordered treatment, or try to flee the state with their child; or the child’s condition was discovered so late that the child is in very poor health because of medical neglect. Alternatively, the parents intentionally denied the child care with hopes of killing them, which tragically happens far too often.
> Will parents’ choices for their children’s medical treatment only be preempted for cancer?
No. The priority is always to communicable diseases, if the sick child presents a public health risk. The second priority is to easily treated but fatal if untreated illness. Third up are diseases that could cripple or disfigure a child for the rest of their life.
> Or will it be extended to the flu, or whether or not a(sic) cut warranted stitches?
Influenza varies by public health risk, but is typically untreatable outside of antiviral medicines. However, if somehow a child is determined to have a dangerously virulent form of influenza, likely to cause Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which is very dangerous and often deadly.
Stitches are usually variable. If a child has continual bleeding through want of stitches, or if the injury is deep and an open wound could lead to quickly lethal infection, then stitches could be mandated. However, there are few instances when parents would refuse stitches, unless they are not concerned for the welfare of the child.
> Or what diet should be used to combat obesity?
This is a good question, in that some parents are insistent on giving their children unhealthy amounts of food, even though the children are showing damage from obesity such as pre-diabetes, high blood pressure, and cardiopulmonary problems.
Alternatively, there are cases where children have an uncontrollable appetite (a condition called polyphagia or hyperphagia), and have to be institutionalized for their own protection. Conversely, there are far more children with anorexia and bulimia, who have severe health problems connected with those psychiatric problems.
> Where will the state, in its never ending push to have more and more control over the affairs of the people, draw the line on what decisions people can make?
See polyphagia or hyperphagia, above. The state cannot control itself, so the people must intervene to prevent the state from gorging itself on power and wealth, as well as to curtail its inability to control its overspending.
It's just that simple, isn't it. Black and white, correct or incorrect. Obviously parents are dumb, as by extension so is the individual, so that thing called the Constitution of our Republic is wrong. We need smarter people than us, the PhD, to look down on us and set us right- and by the way, it's okay if they mess up, but not you.
To eat or not to eat, mandated professional treatment or no treatment, that is the question. So obvious, not to be questioned.
Mocking those having faith, with the pray your way out of jail comment - so you know better about that subject too. You should run for office and save us all, that would be as a democrat.
Not that complicated. Check out scurvy, rickets, pellagra, all diseases that can be prevented or cured through diet. Food is medicine. Would it be okay to deny a child food and pray that these diseases would not appear or go away? In many areas of the world religion dictates female circumcision of young girls. Is this child abuse? I guess you could prove your point the next time you step on a rusty nail and not get a tetanus vaccination but rather pray that nothing bad happens. Don’t get me wrong I’m all for praying and do it frequently but not at the exclusion of modern medical science.
Ms. Oboma thinks so, and you can eat the government committee approved proper diet then. This is what you are asking to have.
Regarding female circumcision, how come you neglect to list legal abortion and male circumcision? Those are okay with the state, lucky for us, we don't have to choose that for our children. But politically, they aren't child abuse.
You want the logic of the state to rule over you? May you live your dream then, and move to some other country. Mandate this, mandate that, if not, we take your children and put you in the gulag. It's for the children after all.
But, it's okay if you kill the fetus, right? After all, it's your body, but it's not, here take this mandated shot.
You want the logic of the state to rule over you? Have at it, China may take you in.
Don't assume those on the other side of your stance ignore modern medicine, maybe we just chose to use it where it makes sense - our choice.
Idiotic superstitions
You assume that is what the other side is about, you know better, they're all stupid and live by idiotic superstitions, and you're smarter than that.
No problem, mandate and regulate smarts into everyone.
It's been tried, it fails every time, the result is tyranny. But you're smarter and know better, it's all good.
Who has the idiotic beliefs and superstitions? Look in the mirror.
As the same with spending my time responding to you. Good day.
Thank you very much for taking the time to answer my questions, and so thoroughly. I am impressed. Is this your area of expertise?
I’ve just picked up a lot of exposure to the finesses of the law over the years. This particular subject is one of the hardest for the law to address: child protective services.
The need for CPS is agreed on almost universally, but they walk the razor’s edge between taking children by mistake from parents who are not abusive; and leaving children with abusive and even murderous parents. Damned if they do and damned if they don’t. The public agrees they are needed, but hates them nonetheless.
And the courts have to adjudicate whether children should be taken away from their parents, and for how long. This is extremely stressful for judges, and they carry the burden of a wrong decision forever.
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