Big government, small religion

On Friday, a Minnesota judge has ruled that a 13-year-old boy cannot opt out of chemotherapy for religious reasons, blaming his parents for "medical neglect" and threatening to remove the boy from their custody.

At first glance, I figured this was another case of Fundamentalists who decline health care in favor of trusting God to heal them. However, in this case, the parents are Catholic, but the son holds to a Native American based faith called Nemenhah Band, which relies on "alternative medicine" and herbal remedies.

This isn't a case of the parents forcing their own religious beliefs on their son, but of the child making decisions based on his own faith. So legally, how can the court state they are neglecting their son by allowing him to practice his own faith? In fact, I'm sure if it was a case of the parents trying to force their son to take chemotherapy against his faith beliefs (especially since he does not hold to Christian faith beliefs), that we would be seeing a different news story about a judge ruling against the parents for trying to coerce their child to act against his own beliefs.

I haven't studied the area of medical ethics other than the few class periods we went over such topics in Christian ethics and Biblical ethics. While I can't really argue what is "ethically" right in regards to the medical field in this case, I do have to say, does the legal system really have the right to force someone by court order to take medical therapy against their will? To me, it seems as if the judge is really saying "I don't care anything about your religious beliefs; I feel you ought to take chemotherapy, and therefore, you have to." Yes, this boy is young, and it's sad to see him refuse a treatment that gives him 90 percent chance of survival, but he has made his decision. And he has made his decision based on his own faith, not his parents.

I have to agree with the parent's attorney when he said "It (the ruling) really affirms the role that big government is better at making our decisions for us."

Of course, there are so many factors involved in this ruling, it's really hard to decide where one should stand. There seems to be such a push in today's culture to make religion a "private matter", but we don't even have that right if the government can enforce a court order telling us our religious decisions are wrong. Yes, the Nemenhah Band sounds shady at best (it's founder spent time in jail for fraud regarding his all natural remedies). But if it's a matter of the entire group being questionable, they need to crack down on all of them, just not this one boy.

People say keep the church out of the state; I say keep the state out of my church.