Idaho and Faith Based Child Neglect

Amy Martin’s daughter, Melissa gets pneumonia after playing in the rain.  Melissa misses two weeks of school as her illness gets more and more severe.  Aside from a steady diet of chicken noodle soup, Melissa isn’t given any medicine.  After another week, she loses the battle and dies.  When the coroner comes to the house he asks why Melissa wasn’t taken to the hospital, and Amy replies that she didn’t feel like it.  The officers on the scene would immediately arrest her and charge her with homicide, child neglect and child abuse.  And Amy would rot away in jail for killing her daughter.

 But instead, Amy says that she didn’t take Melissa to the hospital because it conflicted with her religious beliefs.  In Idaho, Amy would then be free to go.

The difference between murder and a tragic accident is Amy’s belief in prayer and God.  Really?

Al Jazeera-America recently ran an article about a push in Idaho to end parental denial of medical care for their children based on faith.

Here is the Original Article.

It is about a slew of mostly preventable child deaths from a Followers of Christ church.  A further investigation is found here at KATU.  Around 600 graves mark where children were murdered by their parents who neglected to get them medical treatment and instead relied on prayer.

Religion should be treated like sex.  It is fine between consenting adults, but when applied to a child it is a form of rape.  The murdered children of the Followers of Christ did not have the ability to reason for themselves and thus could not have the ability to fully weigh the consequences of not seeking medical attention.  This is the exact same reason why sex with a child is always rape, even if they consent and are willing: they don’t have the capacity to weigh and deal with the consequences of their choice.  In other words, they do not know what they are doing.

This phenomenon of statutory indoctrination must be stopped.  There is no need for children to die because their parents wish to believe in a God.  Their community needs to step in and save those children.  How?  By prosecuting the parents of those dead kids for murder, just like any other neglectful parent.