In the past 25 years, hundreds of children are believed to have died in the United States after faith-healing parents forbade medical attention to end their sickness or protect their lives. When minors die from a lack of parental care, it is usually a matter of criminal neglect and is often tried as murder. However, when parents say the neglect was an article of faith, courts routinely hand down lighter sentences. Faithful neglect has not been used as a criminal defense, but the claim is surprisingly effective in achieving more lenient sentencing, in which judges appear to render less unto Caesar and more unto God.
This gets at a point that really gives me pause. I don’t really care about what looney tune religion you subscribe to, but I also have a very hard time standing by while you kill a kid in the name of your looney tune beliefs:
The advocacy group Children’s Health Care Is a Legal Duty estimates that roughly 300 children have died in the United States since 1975 because care was withheld. When such parents appear in court, they often insist that they love their children and their God — an argument that receives a sympathetic hearing from judges and prosecutors.
Adults (hopefully) have the capacity to understand and pay the price of their decisions. Children do not.
