Monday, March 24, 2008

Praise the Lord -- now don't take that medicine

I'm still visiting the vast greatness of Seattle, but I had to take a moment during my travels to quickly vent about some insane religious zealots I encountered along the way.

See, I was planning on shooting up north so fast that I wouldn't come across any threats to the foundations of humanity. Then I read The Oregonian, which I purchased in Woodburn, Ore. (Woodburn, by the way, is a shitpile, but that's for another day.)

The story is about batshit crazy religious wonks in Portland who refuse to provide care for their children on the grounds that healing the body is an affront to God, or something similarly ignorant:


(The Oregonian) The case of a 15-month-old Oregon City girl who died for lack of medical treatment could become the first test of a state law that disallows faith healing at the expense of a child's life.

Ava Worthington died March 2 at home from bacterial bronchial pneumonia and infection, according to Dr. Christopher Young, a deputy state medical examiner. He said both conditions could have been prevented or treated with antibiotics.

The child's breathing was further compromised by a benign cyst that had never been medically addressed and could have been removed from her neck, Young said.

Child-abuse detectives recently referred investigative findings to prosecutors, who are evaluating the case in light of a law passed in 1999 after several faith-healing deaths of children.

"This is the first time that they could be taking a shot at interpreting the law," said state Senate President Peter Courtney, who carried the contentious bill on the Senate floor nearly a decade ago. He said the Worthington case is giving him "flashbacks."

"Kids were dying. Kids were suffering," he said. "Kids who have no choice over these things."

If prosecuted, Ava Worthington's parents would be the first members of Oregon City's Followers of Christ, a fundamentalist Christian denomination, to face criminal charges for failing to seek medical treatment for a gravely ill child.

Of dozens of children buried since the 1950s in the Followers of Christ Church cemetery south of Oregon City, at least 21 could have been saved by medical intervention, according to a 1998 analysis by The Oregonian. None of the deaths from that era, including the high-profile case of an 11-year-old boy who died from untreated diabetes, resulted in prosecution.

The Followers of Christ deaths prompted a firestorm in the 1999 state Legislature over religious freedom, parental rights and the state's responsibility to protect children. After months of debate, legislators passed a compromise bill that emerged in the final days of the session and was quickly signed into law by Gov. John Kitzhaber.

Basically, these fundamentalists are so selfish that they place their personal religious convictions over the well-being (and survival) of their own children -- children who are far too young to fully understand these beliefs, and who rely on their parents to keep them safe.

The amount of delusion involved in achieving a viewpoint that justifies the defacto murder of a child is simply staggering to me. After a few days of playing with my 8-month-old niece in Seattle, I find it disgusting and inexcusable that anybody would purposefully deny children the basic medical care that would save them from death. The justification is completely alien to me, and I consider that a good thing. I can't imagine reaching an intellectual level that would allow me to understand how people can watch as their children slowly die of ailments that are easily treatable. And in the name of God!

Religion is simply not a defense for criminal negligent murder. If an adult wants to sit around while he slowly rots away in hopes of finding God, more power to him. I hope he finds what he's looking for and doesn't suffer too much. But we must save innocent children from these people, and we must do it immediately before more youngsters die.

3 comments:

Valerie said...

Augh! Reading news stories like that makes me want to bash my head against the wall. I have no idea how people interpret the Bible to say that medical care is something to be avoided. It is incredibly maddening to me. *grumble* I totally agree with you that they are delusional, and I further agree with you that religion should not be a defense for murder. That poor little girl...it's deplorable.

J said...

It seems weird, doesn't it? Somehow we ended up with these incredible brains and intellects -- from God, science, whatever. So it stands to reason that if God gave us the ability to think and discover, he wouldn't mind us using our brains for medicine.

Anonymous said...

Seems like a poor plan for continued church growth.