Is Your Child's Medical Care Truly Up to You?-

This week, a faith healing couple who were on probation for not seeking medical care for their dying child, allowed their eight month old to suffer the same fate.  They have been arrested.  This is the NPR article: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/04/23/178593383/religious-parents-lose-second-child-after-refusing-medical-care

Obviously, this disgusts me on so many levels.  First off, how do you not take a sick child, let alone infant, to the doctor?  Second, how are you not hyper-vigilant not only because the law caught up to you, but because you lost another child, possibly the worst trauma a parent can face?  Third, the God you  prayed to gave you a brain. Perhaps it should have been used.

But this whole case got me thinking of where a parent's right to treat their child medically as they see fit (for religious and other reasons) ends and the government's begins.  I'm not here to choose a side, because honestly, this issue has confounded me since I heard about a mother who got in legal trouble for refusing chemotherapy for her son who was dying from cancer.  By the way, he's fine.  I don't know if they believe it was the power of prayer, alternative care, or just good fortune, but he survived.  I kept thinking that it wasn't what I would have chosen, but doesn't she have the right to make that decision? I truly don't know.

I'm playing devil's advocate here with all of these scenarios.Should all these parents face legal actions?  

A parent decides on homeopathic treatment for their child.  In many cases it works, but in this case it doesn't and for whatever reason, the child dies.  The child has been treated, but those in authority may believe that this isn't "real" medicine and is instead neglect.

True story. Many years ago, a mother brought her young child to the hospital with an very high fever.  Meningitis was suspected but she would not allow the spinal tap. They in turn would not give her medication. She waits it out at home until he is better.  The child is now a grown man.  Negligence?  On Mom or the hospital's part or both?  What if he had died?

Many families choose not to vaccinate.  There is no imminent danger, but what about in a flu outbreak? I respect that people do not want to vaccinate, but does the government have the right to insist on it?  Could they decided that a very sick child was neglected? 

Many c-sections are avoidable, but doctors will tell a scared mother that it is necessary for whatever reason. If there is a complication, can that doctor say that the mother was negligent? 

I truly don't see that legal action would be taken in any of these cases, but you just don't know.  In some Southern states, I would have been charged with manslaughter for having a D and C to resolve a miscarriage.  I don't think those laws actually passed, but it is scary to think that it could be a possibility.

I don't know what the answer truly is. I'm all for if you are harming a child in anyway, you have no right to it.  And I mean in a serious, life-threatening way.  But who is to determine what that line actually is?

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