The Washington Times looks at the difficult issue of parental responsibility and religious liberty, in light of the Minnesota mother and son who this week fled a court order requiring medical treatment for the boy, 13, who suffers from Hodgkin's lymphoma.
Shawn Francis Peters, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who teaches about religion and the law, said these cases are difficult for all sides because they involve value disputes over what the term "best interests of the child" means.
"The great irony in these cases is that everyone involved thinks they are acting in the best interest of the child," said Mr. Peters, the author of "When Prayer Fails: Faith Healing, Children and the Law."
The family's religious beliefs dictate prayer and natural healing. Doctors say that with the proper chemotherapy treatment, the child would have a 90% chance of survival; without it, only a 5% chance.
[UPDATE: At On Faith, Michael Kessler discusses this case and makes the important observation that the child has apparently not demonstrated to the court a competent awareness of either his disease, the treatment he rejects, or the religious beliefs being assigned to him. Kessler also helpfully points to the Supreme Court's ruling in Prince v. Massachusetts (1944), which relates not directly to a child's medical treatment, but in this case to the general welfare of a child as protected by labor laws. Still, the sentiment applies here and obviously – with Daniel's young life likely in the balance – moreso. Justice Rutledge wrote:
Against …sacred private interests, basic in a democracy, stand the interests of society to protect the welfare of children, and the state's assertion of authority to that end, made here in a manner conceded valid if only secular things were involved. . . . It is the interest of youth itself, and of the whole community, that children be both safeguarded from abuses and given opportunities for growth into free and independent well developed men and citizens.
…
[T]he family itself is not beyond regulation in the public interest, as against a claim of religious liberty. And neither rights of religion nor rights of parenthood are beyond limitation. . . . Its authority is not nullified merely because the parent grounds his claim to control the child's course of conduct on religion or conscience. . . . The right to practice religion freely does not include liberty to expose the community or the child to communicable disease or the latter to ill health or death.
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Parents may be free to become martyrs themselves. But it does not follow they are free, in identical circumstances, to make martyrs of their children before they have reached the age of full and legal discretion when they can make that choice for themselves.]
