NASHVILLE, Tennessee – Most U.S. states have child abuse laws allowing some religious exemptions for parents who shun medicine for their sick children, but a few recent cases highlight thorny legal issues for parents following less-recognized faiths.
NASHVILLE, Tennessee – Most U.S. states have child abuse laws allowing some religious exemptions for parents who shun medicine for their sick children, but a few recent cases highlight thorny legal issues for parents following less-recognized faiths.
Existing laws have gradually accounted for more well-known and established faiths, such as Pentecostalism, Christian Science and Jehovah’s Witnesses.
But recent cases in the news have judges and child care advocates dealing with parents who claim adherence to lesser-known faiths, such as the Minnesota family following an Internet-based group’s American Indian beliefs and an independent church in the western state of Oregon that has been investigated in the past for the deaths of members’ sick children.
Legal and religious scholars say it’s becoming more difficult for courts to decide when to honor the religious beliefs of parents and when to order conventional medical treatment for extremely sick children.
The manslaughter trial of an Oregon couple who claim they were following their religious beliefs in the 2008 pneumonia death of their 1-year-old daughter began Monday. Carl and Raylene Worthington are members of Followers of Christ Church, which has been investigated for past child deaths.
In Tennessee, Jacqueline Crank and her minister Ariel Sherman face child neglect charges in the death of her 15-year-old daughter Jessica, who died in 2002 with a basketball-sized tumor on her shoulder. Prosecutors say based on Sherman’s advice, the girl’s mother relied on prayer instead of medicine.
Sherman has been accused of being a cult leader whose Universal Life Church is not a legitimate religion. He has denied such charges and says the church is Christian-based and embraces the Bible.
Believers in faith healing point to a Biblical verse in the Epistle of James, which describes how church elders should be called in to pray over the sick. There’s no mention of doctors, and literalists interpret it to mean medical treatment should be eschewed over prayer.
Gregory P. Isaacs, an attorney for Crank, who is out on bond, argues that Tennessee’s religious exemption law is untested and too vague.
“It really has a tremendous amount of problems,” Isaacs said. “What is an organized religion and what is an ordained minister? What illnesses can you attempt to heal by faith? Those are the two pitfalls in the statute. That’s not what’s really clear.”
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