Health Law
N.Y. Judge Orders Surgery for Amish Tot After Parents Refuse Consent
Posted Dec 24, 2008 11:18 AM CST
By Martha Neil
Finding that a one-year-old Amish boy will die if he doesn't have heart surgery, a New York judge has ordered that it be performed despite his parents' refusal to consent, on religious grounds.
"Family Court Judge Barbara R. Potter ordered that 20-month-old Eli Hershberger, who was born in April 2007 with a hole in the lower part of his heart and also has a blockage, have the surgery," reports the Watertown Daily Times. "The operation will be done by a pediatric cardiologist from Rochester in the coming weeks."
Although the judge ruled last week that the parents, Gideon and Barbara Hershberger, neglected their son by failing to provide him with life-saving medical treatment (thus, apparently, establishing the court's jurisdiction to order the surgery), they do not face criminal charges and the child will remain in their custody. If they now cooperate with his medical treatment, that could be the end of the family court case, the newspaper writes.
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Comments
Miriam Null
Dec 30, 2008 6:12 AM CST
Many such cases seen in family Court. When a parent, even for religious reasons, refuses to provide urgently needed medical care, this is child neglect writ large. No parent can decide to kill his/her child in the name of religious liberty—this carries the liberty a bit too far.
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sb
Dec 30, 2008 10:16 AM CST
I agree that this particular case merits intervention. The easy cases are the ones that have the potential of setting bad precedents, however. The question becomes, then, at what point do we allow the religious beliefs of the parents to govern?
Maybe there’s a bright-line rule, such as where medically necessary to save the life or prevent or correct serious physical disfigurement or something. But how certain is this surgery to save the child? Every surgery of this magnitude has risks; we run the risk of proving the Amish or the Gypsy or the Faith Healers right when we kill the kid with the surgery.
By the way, I don’t agree with these people at all, I’m just raising the constitutional question. The God I believe in gives us our intelligence so that we can solve problems with a combination of science and faith.
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Southerner
Dec 30, 2008 10:30 AM CST
Not to light this too much on fire here, but to poster#1, that is EXACTLY what Roe does.
I am not anti abortion or Roe, but the problem with legal logic is that people tend ot want to use in in other cases ....
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Joey
Dec 30, 2008 1:24 PM CST
Roe does this by minimizing the existance of the child in the first place. ie: If it’s something less than a child we can kill it.
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