-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
We have previously discussed the death of Kent Schaible, here and here. Kent Schaible, 2, died of bacterial pneumonia because his parents Herbert and Catherine Schaible, a fundamentalist Christian couple, believed in faith healing and declined to get medical attention for their child in Philadelphia. They were convicted of involuntary manslaughter and child endangerment.
Common Pleas Court Judge Carolyn Engel Temin sentenced them to 10 years of probation.Terms of the probation include the requirement that the couple seek routine and emergency medical care for their seven other children, ranging in ages from 1 to 15.
What is best for the seven remaining children? Not an easy question to answer. If the parents do not comply with the above requirement, more lives could be lost. Any deterrence on other parents in a similar situation is nonexistent, putting other children at risk. If the parents go to jail, it is unlikely that the children would remain together, especially in the foster care system.
Maintaining the current family structure is far from ideal. Being raised in a fundamentalist Christian household, these children will be indoctrinated in delusional insanity. My heart goes out to them. The parents have shown their delusional insanity with their belief in an “invisible magic being” that can cure disease. It is probably true, as with many of these cases, that this belief was only reinforced with the death of Kent.
H/T: The Washington Times.
Dredd, that is a cool book!
Buddha you have never heard the phrase:
I have had a sufficiency,
any more would be a subgomency
and I am nimlified….
?
I thought it was a real word…..^..^!
HenMan
A+B=WTF
i gotta remember that one
W=c,
Nimlify?
What the Hell is “nimlify” supposed to mean?
That must be a word in Cat-onese, because it’s not English to my knowledge.
Gyges 1, February 12, 2011 at 3:57 pm
Woosty,
I’m honestly interested if you would treat someone who beats a child to death differently than you do this couple, and if so why?
That was a well crafted turn of phrase, it just didn’t answer my question.
—————————————-
You are kidding, right?
Read the rest of my posts on this thread…I thought I was pretty succinct in my responses being about ‘this instance’.
But answer me this…you are really saying that ALL transgressions be held to the strictest letter of the law, no? What would that be in this case, what would nimlify you….
Before faith healers, there were the plantologists:
http://ecocosmology.blogspot.com/2011/02/ancient-ecocosmology.html
Tootie-
With you A+B= WTF.
You rail about “50,000,000 tiny little human organisms snuffed out in the womb by “compassion” and “science”,”medicine” and liberals.”
You also say, “Democrats sure must be proud! Did I mention that blacks have about five times the rate of abortions as whites?”
Suppose you and your “pro life” friends had prevented those 50 million abortions.
The Result: Population increase of approximately
41,500,000 Black Babies
8,500,000 White Babies
By the definitions in your earlier post, you are now guilty of advocating the “genocide of the white race” which you define as allowing the population of brown people to outnumber the population of white people. You previously accused Obama of this crime. Therefore:
TOOTIE = OBAMA
QED.
Woosty,
I’m honestly interested if you would treat someone who beats a child to death differently than you do this couple, and if so why?
That was a well crafted turn of phrase, it just didn’t answer my question.
Seems this represents the final destination of the Death Panels those Christian teabagger like Jan Brewer, Palin, Angle & Bachmann lied about. They don’t want the government deciding how and when your children die. That’s up to you to decide.
But the primary murderer is AZ Gov. Jan Brewer who has decided to kill 100 Arizonans awaiting organ transplant by cutting $1.3 million from the budget thus denying them the critical healthcare coverage needed to pay for the operations and recovery, thus deliberately sentencing them to death.. Brewer and the AZ legislature are playing a game of chicken with the federal government over the Patients’ Protection Act and 100 (actually 98 not taking care of Arizona residents’ lives. Brewer and the AZ legislature have determined that that fight (one which AZ cannot win) and the state budget deficit are far more impoortant than these Arizonans’ lives.
How Christianity. How teabaggers.
Faith is a positive adjunct to any medical procedure, not the other way around, or in this case the only remedy. This is delusional.
If we, as a society, want to maintain freedom of religion then we, as a society, must assume the responsibility for those who have been victimized under the guise of religious freedom. So we pass laws and enforce those laws. Tiresome perhaps, but necessary.
Your freedom to swing a baseball bat ends where my nose begins, and freedom to swing religion ends where a kid’s life begins.~Gyges
Nobody’s bat is as big as the law and I think they used it appropriately in this instance.
James in LA 1, February 12, 2011 at 12:58 pm
James I agree with your entire post.
http://www.philly.com/community/pa/philadelphia/netimes/No_jail_for_childs_death.html
Swarthmore mom
1, February 12, 2011 at 12:29 pm
Blouise: Having thought more about it, I think most priests avoid being alone with children now. People are on the look out. The predators that are still out there look for populations that are not well informed.
========================================================
One of my very best friends (since second grade) is a Catholic priest, a Jesuit, and you are right … he and his colleagues studiously avoid such situations. He does not bemoan the reality of the present day problems nor does he consider such precautions burdensome. (He does, however, with a wink, blame the Benedictines … 😉 ) He also greatly appreciates parents who do not put him or their children in such situations.
I made that rather incendiary comment purposely to illuminate the fact that so called established religions have done as much harm to children as the fundamentalist crack-pots.
And what culheath said.
Tootie, existing law is tiered to accommodate a majority opinion on this issue that has stood for a generation, almost two.
What I see in rhetoric such as yours is you are willing to trample the rights of an adult over some unspecified number of cells. On the other hand, existing law takes into account both the era of development, and the health and welfare of the mother to strike a balance which absolutely has to be struck.
Because what I have not heard in your rhetoric is what punishments you intend for women who defy this intrusion into their private lives?
Do you intend to arrest them? Fine them? Prison? Forced birth? Stoning? Be clear, now, because you will have 10s and 10s of millions of women in this country who are going to demand an exact answer.
Given the issue is charged, likely not the only crisis the mother is facing, and most of all, none of your business, the honorable thing for you to do is withdraw and leave your fellow citizens alone.
It will NEVER be your decision. EVER. Always hers. Pass all the laws you want, and the decision is still not yours to make.
frank,
Your comments are echoed….
Woosty,
So what if anything does the parents religion have to do with the fact that their kid is dead as a direct result of their WILLFUL actions? They made a choice, and as a direct foreseeable result of that choice their kid died.
Most people who abuse their child claim it’s for their own good. Would you say that someone who beat a kid to death, just “made a mistake” and that we should all “grow the f*ck up” for saying that their other children should be removed from their custody? Please explain how this is any different?
Your freedom to swing a baseball bat ends where my nose begins, and freedom to swing religion ends where a kid’s life begins.
Do you realize how many billions of tiny human potential organisms I have deliberately destroyed pleasuring myself over the years? I feel the same way about abortions.
Wootsy is still a Cat, the large majority of government is administrative. Much of it could be done by computers. For the work which requires humans, a complex, diverse world demands an approach that is rational, and not founded on reckless superstition.
Unconditional belief in a deity is not love. In this case, it is a severe mental illness which resulted in A. the death of one child, and, B. setting the stage for future deaths in the same family.
See: Leviticus. Just because it is no longer polite to declare in public these proscriptions for death, they still exist within the underlying dogma, and form the basis for inexplicable punishments and deliberately blind eyes.
Luckily, we have the law to help steer through is this garbage. Too bad we don’t use it when the chips are down, either. See: O’ccomplice.