The parents of 11-year old Kara Neumann, the Wisconsin girl who died of treatable juvenile diabetes last March because her parents relied on prayer instead of medicine, is scheduled to commence May 14th. It is a counter-productive prosecution that should not go forward for 3 reasons.
- Wisconsin law specifically provides that parents may not be criminally prosecuted for relying upon faith healing. Determined to exact a price for the parents’ destructive behavior, the prosecutor has brought a reckless endangerment charge instead. The plain ambition is to sidestep the clear intention of the legislature by bringing a similar but different charge. It’s a lousy way to govern because it makes comprehension and reliance upon the laws impossible to even educated laymen, and undermines the sovereignty of the lawmakers, the branch of government most immediately answerable to the public.
- The conduct of the parents was stupid, not malicious or, apparently, informed in any way by ill-will toward their daughter. Probably, they blame themselves for sins which caused God to ignore their supplications; that’s how these disappointments are often explained by fundamentalists. Whatever they’re telling themselves, the salient fact here is that they believed they were providing properly for her.
- They did exactly what is urged by Sunday Morning Shouters in tens of thousands of churches every week — they relied upon Jesus, rather than the works of man and the ways of a corrupt and fallen world. Does anyone doubt that, if these prosecutions are successful, those who believe in faith-healing will go more deeply underground, that their preachers will explain that it’s the foretold persecution of the faithful, that they will become more inaccessible than ever to the modern world?
None of which is to excuse the parents. Their conduct was infuriatingly stupid, and their misery at their daughter’s death does not redeem it. Prosecuting their stupidity is a mistake, though, one that undermines the proper operation of Wisconsin government, affirms the sense of victimization cultivated by fundamentalist preachers, and holds out no realistic promise of rehabilitation of the parents.
There is a better response, a response that comports with the prevailing statutes without stretching them, which works to undermine the power of the predators who feed upon simpletons like Neumann’s parents, which serves to protect children in immediate danger, and which permits the parents to grieve unmolested in their befuddled stupidity: Terminate the parents’ rights and remove their remaining children to a safe, related if possible, environment.
Kara Neumann died because of her parents’ imbecilic beliefs about the Eternal Truth — a plain, unanswerable case that her siblings are similarly endangered, and for which the law provides a definite remedy. No family court judge in the land would hesitate to remove them from the home. If the children can be removed permanently to the custody of a sane relation, they will be safe and remain in a semi-familiar environment, for which the law provides.
What is more, the state avoids an indirect prosecution for the content of religious beliefs, which is specifically prohibited; there is no offhanded undermining of the state’s protection of religious freedom.
Best, preachers and their congregations will be forced to think twice about relying exclusively upon prayer. The state is saying, “No, we won’t prosecute you for your beliefs — but we will protect your kids from them. If we’re able to place them with a relative, you’ll probably get to see them now and then.” That will clarify wonderfully the thinking of these boobs and, albeit grudgingly, most will start going to the doctor rather than face the prospect of knowing that their children are growing-up somewhere out of sight.
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