Baby Girl Binns may pay the price

I’ve been reading comments to this article about the Fort Wayne Jehovas Witness parents who are refusing a blood transfusion for their newborn baby girl. The child may survive without a transfusion, but once more we are faced with the irrational judgments people make based on unfounded beliefs. There are a couple of themes that pop out.

The state has no right to interfere

Normally where bad decisions are made by adults and only they suffer the consequences I go along with this position. However in the case of children who are too young to give informed consent to medical procedures we, the people, have a right to guard the interests of our most powerless citizens. Parental authority is like every other right — it has its limits.

If we judge outcomes according to consequences we can make ethical decisions. Our overarching goal should be to try and advance the health and happiness of all of our citizens. People of strong religious faith such as the JW are obviously conflicted and biased, We should have no compunction whatsoever overturning their decisions when parents overstep their rights. In the case of the Binns they are showing by the claims they make that they cannot remain neutral. When they award priority to following bizarre interpretations of ancient religious texts they demonstrate they believe that saving their own supposed immortal hides is what they should do, not think rationally about what is best for the temporal health and even the life of their child. The Binns are not taking a principled moral or religious stand, theirs is an act of ignorant people infatuated with religion and frightened by their own mortality.

The really sad part is that they have absolutely no guarantee that if they follow their religious convictions they will achieve immortal life in heaven. No proof whatsoever, just a conviction is all that they base their actions on. If they are wrong, two outcomes are certain. They will not cheat death and they are consigning their child to an early and perhaps painful death. That is some gamble and unfortunately, the child cannot place a bet.

Religious parents like the Binns are acting out of pure self interest and hoping to gain points with a supernatural being they think they can influence favorably. Or if not that at least the other members of their congregation who are certain to judge the Binns if they don’t hew to the JW dogma.

We should not judge others

The strategy some people in the discussion advocate: “to each his own”, is no solution. We have a clear cut case of parents acting in their self interest over the interest of a helpless sick child. Such a position fails even as an indication of a broad mind. It is a cop out, a refusal to think long and hard about what is right and wrong. Ethical dilemmas occur all the time, shrugging your shoulder and saying let what happens, happen is no answer. People who say, to each his own, are not the ones paying the price. A luckless child is paying the price.

Most comments run in favor of the baby

I did not take a careful count of who supported the Binns and who was more concerned with the child, but it seems most people were for the baby. That is encouraging. Many of the parent’s supporters were confessed JWs and they tried to weasel the issue by pointing out how new developments in medicine have produced products that make human blood transfusions a thing of the past. I would have to see more substantiation and none was given in the article comments that I read. The baby is being treated with drugs to decrease anemia and we will have to see how that goes.

People who denounced the parents did so in no uncertain terms. Clearly it makes many people angry to be confronted with the gross ignorance and stupidity the Binns display. How did we ever let our secular country get to a point where religious practice rights took precedence over everything else? That has to get dialed way back and soon.

There is another JW case in Canada that bears watching. Some aggressive JW attorneys up there are having their competence and liability closely examined. (Zemanta article: Man sees subtle victory in fight…)

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