There are quite a few states that currently have varying levels of religious exemptions to child welfare laws, including my current home state of Idaho. In these states if you’re child is obviously deathly ill then there is no obligation to take that child to a doctor as long as you pray for healing while the child dies. Sure, modern medicine can’t save everybody, but nobody in the developed world in the 21st century should be dying of conditions that are now easily treatable or preventable. That goes for vaccines as well, but the focus today is on actual medical care for acute conditions.

The groups that take advantage of these laws groups like the Christian Scientists and Followers of Christ. The religious beliefs behind this range from the Christian Scientists who deny that disease actually exists or just that if you have enough faith then God will heal you (or your child). One one of these groups to go to a doctor would show that you obviously don’t have enough faith and could easily result in being ostracized. Considering how many of their children die of simple conditions, their God isn’t worthy of that faith.

The argument for their supports is that it is a deeply held religious belief and parents should have the right to raise their children according to that belief. However, by that logic Warren Jeffs was only following his deeply held belief that he was entitled to as many teenage wives as he wanted and the girls parents were only following their deeply held belief that their daughters were old enough to marry him. Fortunately that doesn’t change anything, he’s still guilty of statutory rape (a crime for very good reasons) and polygamy (a crime for no good reason).

Just as we don’t allow the free exercise of religion to stand as an excuse for rape, we also wouldn’t allow human sacrifice, even if both the person sacrificed (or the victim’s parents in the case of child sacrifice) and the person who carried it out held it as the most sacred tenant of their religion. We also don’t allow parents to stone disobedient children as the Bible commands. How is letting your children suffer and die because they’re denied medical care any different?