Sacrificing Children on the Altar of Parents' Fanatical Faith

Sacrificing Children on the Altar of Parents' Fanatical Faith

By Robert Weitzel

Created Mar 30 2008 - 2:06pm

"By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice."

Hebrews 11:17

This Easter Sunday, 11-year-old Kara Neumann of Weston, Wisconsin, died of

diabetic ketoacidosis, a curable condition. While Kara was bedridden

suffering waves of nausea and vomiting and excessive thirst and could not

talk, her parents, Dale and Leilani Neumann, knelt in prayer and refused to

seek medical treatment.

Kara's aunt called 911from California and told the dispatcher that her niece

was severely ill and that, "We've been trying to get [Leilani] to take Kara

to the hospital for a week, a few days now . . . but she is very religious

and is refusing."

When Kara stopped breathing, her father's faith weakened and he dialed 911.

Following the ambulance to the hospital, Leilani called the prayer elders of

the Unleavened Bread Ministry, an online church that shuns medical

intervention, and asked them to pray that the Lord would raise her daughter

up. Kara was pronounced dead at the hospital. Predictably, there was no

resurrection in Weston, Wisconsin this Easter Sunday.

Everest Metro Police Chief Dan Vergin, who is investigating the death, told

reporters that the Neumanns are "not crazy." He went on to explain, "They

believed up to the time she stopped breathing that she was going to get

better. They just thought it was a spiritual attack. They believed that if

they prayed enough she would get better . . . they said it was the course of

action they would take again."

Kara's three siblings are staying with relatives until the investigation is

completed, but Chief Vergin assured reporters, "There is no abuse or signs

of abuse that we can see." Vergin is correct . . . sort of. Refusing

life-saving medical care to their remaining children as "the course of

action they would take again" is not child abuse, it is premeditated

negligent homicide.

Unfortunately, the death of a child at the praying hands of religious

parents is not uncommon and is sanctioned by state and federal religious

exemption laws. Under Wisconsin law, parents cannot be accused of child

abuse or negligent homicide if they fervently believed prayer was the best

treatment for a disease or life-threatening condition.

In 1986, 7-year-old Amy Hermanson of Sarasota, Florida, died of diabetes

because her mother and father's religious beliefs forbade medical treatment.

The parents were convicted of child abuse and third-degree murder. Florida's

Supreme Court overturned the conviction in 1992.

In1989, 11-year-old Ian Lundman of Independence, Minnesota, died of diabetes

because his mother and stepfather relied on prayer to cure him. Ian's death

was ruled a homicide and his parents were indicted. A district court

dismissed the case because Minnesota's religious exemption rule recognized

prayer as medical treatment. Minnesota's Appeals Court and Supreme Court

upheld the ruling.

In 2003, federal legislation "sanctioned" the killing of children by

religious parents in the "Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act." The act

requires that states receiving federal grant dollars must include "failure

to provide medical treatment" in their definition of child neglect. However,

to placate the powerful Christian Science lobby and other fundamentalist

groups, legislators included the following caveat: "Nothing in this Act

shall be construed as establishing a Federal requirement that a parent or

legal guardian provide a child any medical service or treatment against the

religious beliefs of the parent or legal guardian."

Only by a twisted, fundamentalist logic-pandered to by politicians-in the

overly religious United States, which is one Supreme Court vote away from

overturning Roe v. Wade in order to protect the rights of an

undifferentiated bundle of cells in a woman's womb, can thinking, feeling,

trusting, loving children be allowed to suffer and die because of the

fanatical religious beliefs of their parents . . .whether the child holds

those beliefs or not.

It is unfortunate that parents, who obviously love their children, regard

their faith in a god with a lousy track record for healing as unassailable,

neither by the love nor by the trust of their children. Between 1975 and

1995, 172 children died in the United States because their parents refused

medical treatment on religious grounds. One hundred and forty of those

children died from conditions which medical science had a 90 percent track

record of curing.

The National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect concluded, "There are more

children actually being abused in the name of God than in the name of

Satan." As Gerald Witt, mayor of Lake City, Florida, said about local

faith-based deaths, "It may be necessary for some babies to die to maintain

our religious freedoms. It may be the price we have to pay; everything has a

price."

But religious zealots need not pay the ultimate price of sacrificing their

children on the altar of faith. It says so in the first book of their bible.

"Abraham built an altar . . . and laid the wood . . . and bound Isaac his

son, and laid him on the altar. And the angel of the Lord called unto him

out of heaven, and said, Abraham . . . lay not thine hand upon the lad . . .

for now I know that thou fearest God . . ." (Gen. 22:9-12).

Should parents decide to disregard both their god's admonition against

sacrificing children to prove a fanatical faith and society's laws against

homicide, they should be held accountable to a secular "higher power" in a

court of law that does not accept the strength of a person's religious

belief as evidence of their guilt or innocence.

Author's note: The United States and Somalia are the only countries that

have not ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their

spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their

government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are

suffering deeply in spirit,

and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public

debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have

patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning

back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at

stake."

-Thomas Jefferson