Sightings 5/22/08
When Prosecutors Grapple with
Prayer
-- Shawn F. Peters
In recent months, prosecutors in
both Oregon and Wisconsin have been confronted with a complex
problem: Should parents who choose to treat their children's
illnesses with prayer rather than medicine be charged with abuse, neglect, or
even manslaughter when their children die? As these cases begin to
play out in the courts, it has become apparent that their task in answering that
question is going to be anything but straightforward, thanks in part to the
ambiguity of laws that might be applied to spiritual healing practices.
The Oregon case involves members of the
Followers of Christ Church, whose faith healing practices generated an intense
statewide outcry in the late 1990's. Church members Carl and
Raylene Worthington currently face manslaughter and criminal mistreatment
charges stemming from the death of their fifteen-month-old daughter, Ava. The toddler died on March 2 from bacterial pneumonia and a blood
infection – ailments that her parents, citing the tenets of their religious
faith, had chosen to treat with prayer rather medicine.
The Worthingtons appear ready to
mount a vigorous defense. Their attorneys already have launched a
website dedicated to both outlining the contours of their defense strategy and
raising money to fund it. But, legally, this promises to be an
uphill climb, thanks to changes in Oregon law that eliminated apparent
exemptions from criminal charges for parents who engaged in faith healing
practices. They most likely will fall back on the claim that their
religious practices are shielded from regulation by the First Amendment and
analogous provisions in Oregon's constitution.
The Wisconsin case is every bit as tragic, but it
might proceed slightly differently in the legal arena. On Easter
Sunday, an 11-year old girl named Kara Neumann died from diabetic
ketoacidosis. Treatments of insulin almost certainly would have
controlled the ailment, but Kara's parents – their beliefs about physical
healing shaped in part by a Flordia-based online ministry – chose to treat her
with prayer in lieu of medical science. Dale and Leilani Neumann
later told police that their daughter had not been examined by a physician in
more than seven years.
In late April, authorities charged
the couple with second-degree reckless homicide, a felony punishable by up to
twenty-five years in prison. But several observers have cautioned
that the prosecution of the Neumanns is bound to be complicated, if not simply
derailed, by the apparent exemption for faith healing practices that remains in
place in the state's child abuse and neglect laws. The couple is
likely to claim that this conflict in the laws (spiritual healing practices
appear to be protected under one part of the criminal code but not under
another) violates their right to due process of law.
Wisconsin's "treatment through prayer"
provision is not unique: More than thirty other states offer
similar kinds of apparent legal protections for devout parents who reject
medicine and turn to prayer when their children are ailing. A
number of groups have lobbied for the repeal of such religious exemptions, chief
among them the advocacy organization Children's Healthcare Is a Legal Duty
(CHILD). Its head, Rita Swan, has argued that these stipulations,
while safeguarding the religious liberty of parents, endanger the health of
children and violate several different interrelated constitutional standards.
Groups ranging from the United Methodist Church to the National District Attorneys
Association also have called for the repeal of religious exemptions to
child-abuse and neglect laws. Several prominent medical organizations – among
them the American Medical Association and the Bioethics Committee of the
American Academy of Pediatrics – have echoed those
calls. In 1988, the latter body issued a statement declaring that
"all child abuse, neglect, and medical neglect statutes should be applied
without potential or actual exemption for [the] religious beliefs" of
parents. Deeply committed to "the basic moral principles of
justice and of protection of children as vulnerable citizens," the members of
the bioethics committee called upon state legislatures to remove religious
exemption clauses and thereby ensure "equal treatment for all abusive
parents."
A decade after that call for reform,
however, a majority of states, including Wisconsin, have failed to act. Unfortunately, it seems that legislators might only lurch into action and
address the law's shortcomings if the prosecution of the Neumanns misfires.
[Shawn Francis Peters' latest book,
When Prayer Fails: Faith Healing, Children,
and the Law, was published in November by Oxford University Press.
He teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.]
----------
Sightings
comes from the Martin Marty Center at the
University of Chicago Divinity School.
The New York Times ran an article on Sunday talking about how much food is wasted in this country - a staggering 25% of food available for consumption in this country gets thrown away. There is similarly a tremendous amount of water waste in this country. And both of these in a world where people die from lack of food and water.
My thoughts on this are conveyed at greater length here. I appreciate that it is hard politically to gain traction around issues of food and water waste. But it shouldn't be hard to gain traction among those who take seriously principles of Catholic Social Thought. What kind of stewards of the good of the earth are we being? And how seriously are we taking the principle of the universal destination of goods? As I conclude in my other post on this issue: "If we truly recognize that all we have is gift from our loving God, we will think more about how we use what we have been given. And if we recognize that this gift from God is meant to benefit all, we will spend time thinking about what steps we can take (both individually and communally) to address the fact that so many lack so much of what we take for granted."
A reader comments on Prof. George's argument regarding marriage between a husband and wife as an intrinsic good:
In his response to your hypothetical, Professor George offers a clear presentation of the intrinsic good of marriage in the language and logic of the natural law tradition. My worry is that the ready availability of divorce and easy legal access to contraception already compromises this "intrinsic good." So that, if we are to take seriously George's understanding of how the law should teach, we must be committed both to making divorce and the use of contraception within marriage illegal. I don't know if George himself is committed to these positions, but I would hazard that many people who more or less subscribe to the "intrinsic good" of marriage articulated by George are not willing subscribe to them. So the question becomes, why should divorce and contraception remain legal while homosexual unions remain illegal? I'm not sure that George's argument provides an answer.
Prof. George can correct me if I'm wrong, but my guess is that he would not favor the re-criminalization of contraceptive use / distribution because of the intrusiveness of such laws. It is generally seen as less problematic to grant a negative liberty to engage in immoral conduct (the right to use contraceptives free of government coercion) than to grant a positive liberty to do so (the right to have my chosen relationship recognized and affirmed by the government). I would also guess that Prof. George would favor the repeal of no-fault divorce laws.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
The Ninth Circuit has ruled that the miltary's "don't ask, don't tell" policy is subject to heightened scrutiny under Lawrence v. Texas. I have not yet read the opinion, but Eugene Volokh suggests that the Ninth Circuit has interpreted Lawrence as recognizing a fundamental right to sexual autonomy.
Sr. Carol Keenan, D.C., President of the Catholic Health Association, spoke this morning on “Health Care and the 2008 Presidential Elections: Whose Voice is not at the Table?” at a workshop for Catholic health care administrators being held at St. John's University in New York this week. The talk focused on our failure to develop a rational health delivery system and raised questions about the positions of the various candidates on health care. She gave a similar talk in Cleveland last week, which can be viewed on youtube here.
Sen. Lieberman essay is in today's WSJ. Here is the opening paragraph:
"How did the Democratic Party get here? How did the party of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy drift so far from the foreign policy and national security principles and policies that were at the core of its identity and its purpose?"
