{"id":24821,"date":"2011-02-21T17:44:59","date_gmt":"2011-02-21T17:44:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/2011\/02\/21\/faith-healing-deaths-in-oregon\/"},"modified":"2011-02-21T17:44:59","modified_gmt":"2011-02-21T17:44:59","slug":"faith-healing-deaths-in-oregon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2011\/02\/21\/faith-healing-deaths-in-oregon\/","title":{"rendered":"Faith Healing Deaths in Oregon: New Law will Lift Protection of Religious Child Abusers"},"content":{"rendered":"

A child who is killed by an abusive parent is, in a sense, avenged by the law which seeks to identify, charge, try, convict, sentence and punish such a parent. Abuse might include something obvious like striking a child with a weapon, but it can also include starving the child to death or other forms of neglect, or failing to provide life-saving medical treatment. In other words, if your child is deathly ill and you don’t take him or her to a medical facility or otherwise seek treatment, and the child dies, you are at fault.<\/p>\n

Unless, of course, you are all religious and shit.
\n
\nIf your religion says that you should not seek medical treatment to save the life of your child, and for this reason your sick child dies, that’s OK. Or, at least, that’s OK in Oregon, where a series of children, mainly of the Followers of Christ religion, have died for this exact reason.<\/p>\n

But that is likely to change. State Rep. Carolyn Tomei, D-Milwaukie OR and others are pushing a bill that would eliminate the religious exemption that currently protect this form of child abuser. The legislation is very likely to pass and there appears to be no organized opposition. Upcoming hearings on the topic are expected to see no one speaking against it.<\/p>\n

Apparently the members of this especially creepy religion not only withhold life saving medicine for their morbidly ill children, they also withhold any effort to speak to the press or other outsiders. It is said that while many “Followers” follow their own rules and don’t take their sick children to doctors or clinics, others do, secretly. Those who use modern medicine are said to fear ostracism. It turns out, of course, that the entire bunch of them are effectively ostracized from the rest of society because they are so creepy.<\/p>\n

Followers typically “treat” their sick children with prayer, oils, and laying on of hands. Then, some of the children get better, some die, and some, such as the infant child of church mebers Timothy and Rebecca Wyland, simply go blind in one eye from an untreated growth.<\/p>\n

Have a look at the article covering this<\/a>. The approach taken by authorities is rather unsatisfying, and the claim is being made that the religious practices of these wackos should be protected because, well, they are christians and all that. The law only protects children and does so because, as one attorney involved in supporting the bill says, “God also gave us doctors and the capability to heal physically, and we should use those gifts.” Dumbass.<\/p>\n

Well, at least the bill will make it easier for authorities to protect the infants who are otherwise being tossed on the trash heap by these crazy christians.<\/p>\n

Hat tip to Gwen Smith Olson for sending me the link to this article. <\/em><\/p>\n

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A child who is killed by an abusive parent is, in a sense, avenged by the law which seeks to identify, charge, try, convict, sentence and punish such a parent. Abuse might include something obvious like striking a child with a weapon, but it can also include starving the child to death or other forms … Continue reading Faith Healing Deaths in Oregon: New Law will Lift Protection of Religious Child Abusers<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[2486],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5fhV1-6sl","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24821"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24821\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}