While scrolling through Facebook recently, I came across an article that caught my eye. Now, I'm not usually one to click on random articles or delectable cooking videos that show up on my Facebook feed. But I felt compelled to click on this one. The article told the story of Mariah Walton, a young woman who never received medical treatment for a congenital heart defect called pulmonary hypertension. The disease caused her to have a small hole in her heart and if Mariah had received medical attention earlier in her life, the hole could have been repaired. But now, at the age of 20, her condition has left her permanently disabled because she never received any medical treatment for her illness until she was 18 years old.
My first question when I read this story was, why did she not receive any medical treatment when she first showed symptoms of the disease? and how did her condition progress as far as it did without there being some kind of intervention? As I continued to do more research into the story, I found that Mariah's family belongs to a sect of the Christian faith known as the "Followers of Christ." The branch of Christianity has about 2,000 members and is based mainly in Idaho and Oregon. This sect of Christianity is mostly known for their extreme beliefs in something called "faith healing." Faith Healing is the belief that those who face physical ailments can be cured through prayer and the power of God. Thus, the reason Mariah never received any medical attention was because her parents refused to take her to a doctor. Instead, her parents as well as those who were also part of the sect, prayed for her and performed rituals around her body in the hopes that she would be healed exclusively through her spirituality. Well, after years of just using prayers and healing rituals to treat Mariah, her condition has progressively gotten worse and she now needs a heart and lung transplant for her to have any chance of recovery.
As I learned all of this information, I was shocked. In my mind, the fact that her parents hadn't taken her to see a doctor despite the fact that her body was slowly deteriorating was considered child abuse. They were putting their child in danger by not providing her with the medical attention she clearly needed, how is that not child abuse? Well, according to Idaho state law, it's not. Mariah's parents are protected under Idaho's 1972 "Child Protective Act." This act makes parents immune from prosecution for any crime in relation to their child (including negligence and manslaughter) if they depend exclusively on faith healing to treat their children. With that being said, parents can legally deny their children medical care in the state of Idaho without being prosecuted due to their right to religious freedom that is stated in the first amendment; whether it's something minor or something serious.
If that isn't shocking enough, 47 states (including Idaho) don't even require that children be immunized because they are protected under their religious beliefs. Also, the majority of states in our country have religious exemptions regarding newborn metabolic testing (tests that would detect mental disabilities as well physical handicaps). On top of that, 38 states as well as the District of Columbia have religious exemptions outlined in their codes pertaining to child abuse that, like the law in Idaho, protects parents from certain child abuse related crimes because of their religious beliefs. The state of Arkansas even has a religious defense for the capital murder of a child. If that's not damning then I don't know what is.
Like Mariah's story, there are dozens of other cases of children in the sect not being treated due to their religious beliefs. And it is even estimated that the child mortality rates of children in the group who are living in Idaho are "10 times higher than the rest of the state." Mariah is currently calling for her parents to be prosecuted for their actions and hopes that her story may prevent this from happening to other children. No matter what your religious beliefs are, I'm sure we can all agree that child abuse is never okay. Whether you're a Christian or not we can most likely all agree on that one. But if cases like these would always be considered child abuse if the religious aspect was taken out of them, why is religion the sole reason that these crimes aren't punishable? At what point do we draw the line between religious freedom and the well being of a child? This is something we need to talk about.
