The Hershberger’s one year old son Eli, suffers from Tetralogy of Fallot, a congenital heart defect that while not immediately fatal, carries an estimated survival rate of 30% by ten years without corrective surgery. Prognosis with the surgery is generally a good one, the chance to lead a normal life, albeit with increased risk of cardiac arrest. The Hershberger’s, however, are Amish. As Peters notes in his post Developing Amish medical neglect case in New York, the Hershberger’s are objecting to the invasive nature of the heart surgery on religious grounds -

“The Amish religion does not forbid its people to seek modern medical care. When necessary, the Amish can have surgical procedures, dental work, anesthesia, or blood transfusions. Organ transplants are permitted, except for the heart. The Amish believe the heart is the soul of the body. (Exception: Pediatric patients who have not been baptized can receive a heart transplant.)”

Young Eli’s case is somewhat different than many of the medical neglect cases that have made headlines recently in that he’s not currently symptomatic and does not appear to be in any immediate medical danger, though the probability of death increases with each year to a statistical near-certainty. In these cases the court’s job is to weigh the rights of parents to raise their children as they see fit, including religious freedom, against the state’s significant interest in safeguarding the health and welfare of the child. Social Services has petitioned the court to have Eli removed from the home and placed in foster care in order to have the surgery.

This case is pretty straightforward; however, it seems somewhat reminiscent of a less straightforward case reported by The Wall Street Journal three weeks ago about the debate over the right of parents to reject medical treatment for their children due to religious reasons.

The recent death from untreated diabetes of an 11-year-old Wisconsin girl has invigorated opposition to obscure laws in many states that let parents rely on prayer, rather than medicine, to heal sick children. Dale and Leilani Neumann of Weston, Wis., are facing charges of second-degree reckless homicide after their child, Madeline Kara Neumann, died on Easter after slipping into a coma. The death, likely preventable with insulin, has renewed calls for Wisconsin and dozens of other states to strike laws that protect parents who choose prayer alone in lieu of medical treatment.

Of course any decision would require states to walk a fine line between the freedom of parents to practice their religion and the responsibility of parents to take care of their children’s needs. Although they vary widely by state, 45 states currently have some sort of legal protection for parents who use spiritual healing. Some provisions uniformly protect parents from prosecution for solely pursuing spiritual healing for their children while others only protect parents from prosecution for said actions in misdemeanor cases. However, the article notes that states are slowly starting to rethink these statutes, opening parents who rely solely on spiritual healing to possible prosecution for child neglect and, in the Wisconsin case, reckless homicide. Some of these laws leave an important question hanging that states must resolve: “If a state permits people to employ prayers for healing, can it then hold a parent criminally liable if those prayers fail?”

Sources:

Wall Street Journal: A Child’s Death And a Crisis for Faith

ABC News: Mom Accused of Withholding Son’s Chemo