Faith-Based Medical Neglect: for Providers and Policymakers
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COMMENTARY
Faith-Based Medical Neglect: for Providers and Policymakers Rita Swan 1 Accepted: 19 July 2020 / Published online: 9 October 2020 # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract A substantial minority of Americans have religious beliefs against one or more medical treatments. Some groups promote exclusive reliance on prayer and ritual for healing nearly all diseases. Jehovah’s Witnesses oppose blood transfusions. Hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren have religious or conscientious exemptions from immunizations. Such exemptions have led to personal medical risk, decreases in herd immunity, and outbreaks of preventable disease. Though First Amendment protections for religious freedom do not include a right to neglect a child, many states have enacted laws allowing religious objectors to withhold preventive, screening, and, in some states, therapeutic medical care from children. Religious exemptions from child health and safety laws should be repealed so that children have equal rights to medical care. Keywords Faith-based medical neglect . Public policy . Religious beliefs
Religion and science are arguably two of the most powerful drivers in human existence. Many consider them different types of truth and both valid while others try to combine them or reject one for the other. Faith-based rejection of medical care has cost the lives of many children and poses challenges to providers. Asser and Swan (1998) reviewed deaths of 172 U.S. children after medical care was withheld on religious grounds from 1975 to 1995. Many of the children died of readily treatable infectious diseases and diabetes. The authors found that 80% of the children would have had at least a 90% likelihood of survival with timely medical care. Many types of child abuse and maltreatment have been justified by some on religious grounds—for example, severe corporal punishment, exorcism, forced labor, forced marriage, dangerous diets, conversion therapy, and sexual abuse. Yet only faith-based medical neglect is protected in statute. Preventive and screening measures from which many state laws provide religious exemptions include immunizations, metabolic testing, Rita Swan is a child advocate. Since 1977 Rita has been working to protect children from harmful religious and cultural practices, especially faith-based medical neglect. She founded the organization Children’s Healthcare Is a Legal Duty, Inc. (aka CHILD) and served as its president from 1983 to 2017. * Rita Swan [email protected] 1
Children’s Healthcare Is a Legal Duty Inc (CHILD), 136 Blue Heron Place, Lexington, KY 40,511, USA
blood lead-level tests, newborn hearing tests, prophylactic eye drops, vitamin K injections or drops, vision examinations, dental examinations, and school instruction about disease (Children’s Healthcare Is a Legal Duty, hereafter cited in text as CHILD (2020a), Religious exemptions from health care). Oregon and Pennsylvania have religious exemptions from bicycle helmets for children (Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes §75–3510(b)(3); Oregon R
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