Photo by Randy L. Rasmussen/The Oregonian"Marci Rae Beagley, center, and her husband, Jeffrey Dean Beagley, behind left, walk into the Clackamas County Courthouse courtroom of Judge Susie L. Norby for their arraignment."
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The Oregonian
An Oregon couple was convicted on criminally negligent homicide.
The couple are believers in faith healing -- so, when their 16 year old son developed a urinary tract infection, they had prayed instead of taking their son to the doctors for modern medicine to take care of the problem. The son had a complication; he was suffering from a serious kidney disease resulting from a constriction in his bladder that was present at birth. A catheter could have saved his life, and -- a side note -- they previously had lost their granddaughter due to pneumonia and a blood infection because their granddaughter's parents had believed the same way.
I am kind of split on this situation.
On one hand, it is sad that the child had died from something that would have been preventable if only he would have be able to receive medical treatment. I mean, I am sure the parents did not mean to kill their son, but with the loss of their granddaughter, you would have thought that they would have at least possibly reconsidered their stand on no modern medicine. A loss of a child is something that most of us want to prevent.
On the other hand, it is their religious belief. I may not agree with the way they do things. I mean, if my children get sick, I’ll take them to the doctor. If they get really sick, I would go to the hospital, and, for me prayer, would be all part of the process. It is just one of those situations where I feel that, if they start to ban and make laws against some religious beliefs, I don’t think it will be long till my religious beliefs will be infringed on.
Today it's faith healing, and tomorrow it will be your right to deny flu shots or certain vaccinations -- or it will be the rights of you to decide that treatment option best for your child.
I know plenty of people who don’t vaccinate or refuse blood transfusions because of religious beliefs. They are good people, and they just believe different things than I do. I would hate to see their child die and them get charged with criminally negligent homicide all because, if they went against their beliefs, they might have been viewed as having been able to save them. I know they would not intend for their child die, but they wanted to honor the ways of the God and belief system they believe in.
All in all, I think it may be a slippery slope that they went down when they charged these parents -- a well intentioned slippery slope, but a slippery slope none the less. But when it comes to whether this decision is for the best, my verdict is still out. Saving a life is precious. The freedom of religion is priceless, and finding a balance is the great divide.
I guess someday we will find that balance.
The real question here is how far is too far?
How far does a religion go until it becomes a crime? Should the parents be charged?
True 
Lifetime
Comments (33)
Here, copied and pasted from Momaroo.
The slippery slope is a logical fallacy and generally employed only by those with no real argument. Luke (you might know him, he was the author of two books of the New Testament) was a doctor. There is no basis in Scripture on which to reject modern medicine. Religious beliefs must be legitimate and "sincerely held" before they can be used to circumvent the law, that's why we don't allow people to sacrifice virgins and claim they are followers of ancient Mayan religions. What you are describing is moral relativism and it is antithesis to actual morality.
Jesus once asked his disciples to ready a boat for him, so that he could distance himself from a crowd which may otherwise crush him. If Jesus did this, we could go to the dentist.
@scrambledmegsntoast@xanga - I can't agree with that. I get your point, but a parent should be able to choose what ever course of action for healing their child they deem fit. It wasn't as if poisoned or stabbed the child. History does have a pattern of governments taking further and further steps to take over peoples lives. Most governments finish off, at the collapse of the country or conquering there of, far more involved in controlling peoples lives then they started. Once they're dictating one thing about your childs life, it won't be long before it's another. And they already do dictate some things about our childrens lives, so it's not that i'm saying this is the beginning of a trend. Just a continuation, or their hopes for a continuation. It's very sad what happened to the child, but the price of (unsuccessfully)trying to save everyone from death with law is that we all become bubble boys and girls. And i don't like that idea, i don't think anyone would if they saw it in that light.
@jaydedheart@xanga - Well, I don't see it as some sort of tea party, libertarian, political statement. Morals are morals. Life is life. I will worry about the next things if they come.
Working in a hospital for 30 years shows me that modern medicine is absolutely willing to bend over backwards to accommodate beliefs in blood transfusions and medications. On the other hand, governmental agencies have a history of seizing kids on such pretexts. Obviously, it’s a case-by-case thing. Some enlightened official needs to confer with the parents and their church elders.
The secularists just love to jump on stuff like this and make their case for the basic harmfulness of religious faith. But there’s no need for an adversarial relationship. All it takes is for some honesty, commonsense, and good intention to prevail--which, granted, can sometimes be as big a miracle as a divine healing.
And maybe the parents should sit under some teaching that is heavenly minded but has its feet planted firmly on the ground.
This reminds me of an old, yet truthful, joke I've heard...
There was a really bad flood a few years ago. In the midst of all the chaos, a very religious man climbed onto the roof of his house to keep above the quickly rising water. A rescue boat comes by and shouts to him, saying, "Get in! Get in! We can save you!" The religious man shakes his head no and says "God will rescue me." The boat sails away. A little later, when the water is starting to touch his feet, another boat pulls up. The driver shouts "We have room for you! Get in!" Again, the man shakes his head no and says "No, God will give me a miracle." And again the boat sails away. Later, when the man is nearly overtaken by the waves, a helicopter flies by and tosses down a latter. The pilot shouts into a bullhorn "Grab hold! We can save you!" But again, the man says "No, God will give me a miracle and save me." The helicopter flies away, and the man soon drowns.
He arrives at the gates of Heaven, soggy and confused. He walks up to St. Peter and says, "I don't get it, I had total faith that God would give me a miracle." St. Peter looks at the man's paperwork and chuckles.
"We sent you two boats and a helicopter..."
This is no different than starving a child to death. These people are morons and should be charged with murder in some degree. Faith is no excuse for stupidity.
@jaydedheart@xanga - Well, the government "already dictates" things about parenting like, oh, you can't beat your kids, you can't starve them, you have to provide them with adequate education, and things like that. And so far, I haven't seen them infringing on your parental rights.
I would think that if the government can do all that (and GOD, education isn't even necessary to stay alive) I would think that a right to access medical help would be a good thing for children to have.
I agree to @CyanideNGunpowder@xanga - Faith should not prevent you from using common sense. Why should a religion forbid to save your children's life? It just doesn't make sense to me.
@scrambledmegsntoast@xanga - We've come a long way down taking that stance, though. Every time the line in the sand is pushed further away, we creep a little past the new one.
@Shy___Away@xanga - Well, a few things: One, what is "adequate" education, and how many children have actually had it thanks to the government? I remember school trying to tell me that Columbus was a genious amongst people who thought the world was flat, and he was a great pre-American piece of American History. Well, that was just one of many pretty inflated hot air balloons they attached to the mind of children everywhere across the country. That didn't serve us well, but it sure serves the government well to give us a fantasy land that glorifies violent creatures like Columbus and other historical figures in our History.
Two, are you aware about the parents who were forced in two states(i know that one was Texas, the other is slipping my mind at the moment) to give their female children vaccines against their will? Vaccines which, by the way, have already been demonstrated in early studies to be linked to physical and mental harm. Also, certain States have already attempted to move on several occasions to eliminate Home Schooling, or put additional restrictions on it.
These are just some examples of the government attempting to take over the parenting of our children.
I understand your point regarding not allowing parents to physically harm their child, but there is a difference here. There is a certain difference between giving someone a disease and choosing a form of how to attempt to cure it. I'm with you a 100 percent that this isn't the right way, but i would bet there are certain ways you or i might think someone should be treated medically that the other would never agree to. So, if these parents don't decide, who gets to? The government? How can we trust them to make the right choice? The hospitals? Can we really trust them when they are so heavily influenced by the pharma and heath insurance industries? I'll take my chance with the parents..cause at least we have greater potential, since generally speaking we love our kids, even if some people make mistakes.
Hmm... I've been thinking about this one a lot. We choose to selectively vaccinate our children (because I've never been comfortable with the amount of vaccines "needed" now, nor that they are being administered when a child is 2 months old, etc). How is this too much different? The particular belief system held by those in the article aren't really "typical" Christian beliefs (I'm not sure what they base their refusal in modern medicine on). The problem I have with this particular case (not the case of the granddaughter - that's beyond sad, ridiculous and totally preventable) was that the kid had what appeared to be just a severe cold. It wasn't like he had cancer and they were ignoring symptoms like severe lethargy, weight loss, etc. He just appeared to have the flu or a cold. Most doctors probably wouldn't have diagnosed him with anything until it was too late anyhow - unless he went to the ER. The most he probably would have received was antibiotics, which may have marginally helped with a kidney infection (I've had one - I had to be hospitalized with a catheter for 7 days because of it), but there are other treatments that would have been necessary that a doctor in an office probably wouldn't pick up on (not that I think that doctors are dumb... but what his condition indicated was not something that you would typically see a doctor order additional tests for).
And the article does say that a child over the age of 15 (which he was) could have asked for medical treatment or refused medical treatment on his own. I know that would have been difficult to go against his parents, but let's not pretend like it is totally impossible.
Everything is in God's hands, right? If the parents really did this out of the right heart and the best intentions, then I guess there's something to be relayed onto us all. And if not, then this is a horrible punishment that we need to take a good look at (talking about the loss of their son. not jail time).
the parents should be charged with negligence.
I believe in faith healing, but I also believe that our great and glorious God gave us the intelligence tohave the ability to go to school and learn about the human body. That's why we say that he is a gifted surgeon, or nurse. God has given us these abilities to help out mankind.
to me, faith healing means that you accept
it when God's answer to our request to heal is no. And I know faith
healing works, I have seen it work, I have experienced it. But there
are always times God says No.
This being said, when my little
ones get sick, I will take them to our doctor. But then we are blessed
with a great doctor and a naturalpath.
But our house is vaccine free home, and that decision was made after a
long 2 years of research and what I feel is best for our kids (and
ourselves) not on religion.
I myself am not religious. I have a personal relationship with my Heavenly Father
Here we go again...people who somehow think this world and everything in it have nothing to do with God. I wonder why they don't just kill themselves if they truly believe that? We love to talk about freedom of religion in the U.S. but why is it that if someone's religion involves killing or some sort of criminality we don't allow them their freedom of religion? People are nuts. I see people looking for this or that passage in the Bible to justify their beliefs which basically makes the Bible useless. Look at the Catholic church for example. It wasn't until the 1980s that the Vatican officially admitted and accepted that the world is not flat. Only a few months ago the Vatican stated that its followers should be open to the possibility of extraterrestrial life and also be more accepting of other faiths. I'm using the Vatican as an example but it's nice to see the Vatican trying to get out of the dark ages into reality but look at all the damage the catholic church has done to individuals and society over the centuries? People know a person is nuts if he says 1+1=173.5 but when it comes to religion that doesn't make sense it's "ooooh...can't say anything. freedom of religion and all of that crap". I'm sorry but the world was round millions of years before the Vatican accepted that simple fact.
I support mandatory vaccinations so I don't think anyone wants to hear any more from me on the matter
You wouldn't say, oh, "God will feed my kids" and do nothing but pray, no? I understand once, but twice? Absolutely absurd.
This is an incredibly slipperly slope. It boils down to the seperation of church and state or religion and stately interference. Negligent homicide is a very strong sentence especially strong charge. I think that both parties (the faith-healers and the state) both need to compromise. In this instance, we have two extreme ends of the spectrum operating against one another. As noted, the family should have learned from the previously ill granddaughter that modern medicine can be helpful. Extremism is never healthy. There needs to exist a balance. Although as Christians, we are not to conform to this world, we do live in this world and hence can benefit from advancements like modern medicine. The flip side of the coin being that court systems need to respect this radical sect of Christianity and take that into consideration when arriving at a final verdict.
This was a great article.
I'm just glad that I'm not judge and jury on this trial!
Eryn-Ashlei Bailey
if you're going to argue that this kind of thing should be protected as religious expression, then ALL extreme religious expression would need to be allowed. female circumcision and that girl who was killed by her Muslim father for becoming too Western and secular come to mind first........ if people who deny their children medical care because they believe it's what God wants should be respected for it, then people who choose other extreme religious acts for their children should be as well. otherwise, you're playing favorites because they're Christian.
@theworldiswatchingyou@xanga - ditto :)
"And hearing this, Jesus said to them, 'It is not those who are healthy
who need a physician, but those who are sick...'" (Mark 2:17).
Jesus said, if someone is sick, they need to go to the doctor. (I know, it was an illustration of a larger point about repentance, but still.) And this was from a person who could heal you with a touch of His hand if He wanted. The application here is very much to the point of @CyanideNGunpowder@xanga 's joke-- there's no contradiction between faith in God and faith in God's gift of human reason to doctors.
As for the political question, the religious issue only clouds the matter. (For some perspective, try replacing the word "God" in the story with the name of a deity you don't believe in-- Moloch or Hecate or The Liberal Media, perhaps-- and see how it reads then!) It's not a question of religious freedom; it's a question of stopping people from killing children. If you want to know whether people should be legally allowed to kill defenseless children if their personal beliefs say it's OK-- just ask a conservative religious anti-abortion activist!
(Also, since this seems to be a misunderstanding in some of the comments above--Medieval people in the so-called "dark ages" knew perfectly well that the earth is spherical. It says so in the Old Testament, even. The "flat earth" is part of a later revisionist story by folks who wanted to make the medievals look less than intelligent, and can't be found in any genuine literature of the period.)
Who needs meds when you can pee blood and die?!
prayer fail
I'm always amazed at people who believe in this, because Luke, the writer of the Gospel of Luke and Acts was a physician.
@scrambledmegsntoast@xanga - yea thats true. not only that but wasnt Luke a doctor himself? getting help from doctors isnt bad, or wrong at all.