Today’s NY Times discusses the case of Kara Neumann, an 11 year old girl from Wisconsin who died after her parents tried to heal her with prayer, and who refused her medical attention.

www.nytimes.com/2009/01/21/us/21faith.html?th&emc=th

According to the article:"About a month after Kara’s death last March, the Marathon County state attorney, Jill Falstad, brought charges of reckless endangerment against her parents, Dale and Leilani Neumann."

It seems that freedom of religion allows people to believe what they want, but does not protect them from prosecution for actions that endanger others for practicing those beliefs. I would guess that the Watchtower Society (WTS) is watching these two important cases very closely, as their outcome could have a severe impact on Jehovah’s Witnesses and their stand on blood transfusions.

I was surprised a couple of decades ago by the response when, as an elder, I called Bethel to discuss a family I was working with. They had a small son diagnosed with medical issues that, according to his doctors, would soon require a blood transfusion. I forget all the details, but I believe it had to do with a dropping red or white blood cell count.

At Bethel, I talked with my friend Fred Rusk, who was heading the WTS’s blood program at the time, out of which would come the Hospital Liason Committees and a much more complicated blood policy that would allow all sorts of blood particle transfusions, use of the Cell Saver medical technology, and so on. My surprise was that, in talking with Fred, we were urged to be reasonable with doctors, try to buy some time for the parents, but not to resist if the state decided to step in, take the child, and force the transfusions against the wishes of the parents.

I remember getting the distinct impression that it might be of some relief to the WTS when the state took matters out of their hands and proceeded to save a dying child by forcing transfusions. I also got the impression that it was an embarrassment to the Society when JW parents did things like snuck a child out of a hospital and hid it from the authorities. The death of a child under those circumstances has a huge, negative effect, and I don’t believe that the WTS minded avoiding that awful publicity, even if it meant the child was being forced to break Jehovah’s law. That, after all, the WTS claimed, would be the responsibility of the state and doctors, and couldn’t be blamed on the parents or the WTS .

I do wonder, though, if the failed, faith-healing Nemann’s are convicted for reckless endangerment for the death of their daughter, how long it will be before the belief system behind these kind of actions has to face a similar prosecution? The Neumanns and Jehovah’s Witnesses aren’t refusing certain medical treatments simply on their own ideas, they are doing it because this is what they are being taught by an ecclesiastical authority that they have faith in. It is the leaders of the Witnesses who teach that the comment in Acts 15 to "abstain from things sacrificed to idols, and from blood...." directly applies to certain types of blood transfusions. It is the leaders of the WTS who teach that accepting one of those types of transfusions is as bad as fornication, and as such, can prevent you from gaining everlasting salvation.

Can the parents be prosecuted for endangerment for practicing something that their religious leaders tell them is God’s law and necessary for their and their children’s everlasting salvation, while those very leaders cannot be held accountable for their teachings that endanger or even kill their followers?

That may be a question we soon see dealt with in a court of law. When it is, the groundwork laid by Kerry Louderback-Wood’s article, "Jehovah’s Witnesses, Blood Transfusions and the Tort of Misrepresentation," published in the Autumn 2005 Journal of Church and State, may add another serious dimension to the case against the WTS and its stand on certain blood transfusions - the fact that the Society has consistently misrepresented the facts about blood transfusions in its literature.

If parents can be found guilty of a crime for practicing a religious belief that endangers the life of their child, how much more guilty are the religious leaders who created and continue to teach that endangering belief, who threaten with divine disfavor and punishment those who go contrary to the belief, and who also knowingly misrepresent the facts and data in order to give a false sense of scientific and medical support to the endangering belief?

That scenario has got to be a nightmare in the minds of the WTS leadership.

RFS

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