=AtG=
Some anti-vaxxer Albertan parents who decided to treat their infant child’s meningitis with hot peppers and garlic have been charged with “failing to provide the necessities of life:”
David Stephan, 32, and Collet Stephan, 36, were charged a year after their nearly 19-month-old son Ezekiel died in March 2012, under Section 215 of the Criminal Code which deals with “failing to provide the necessaries of life.”
…
Shannon Prithipaul, the past president of the Criminal Trial Lawyers Association, thinks it would be unlikely for the couple to receive “something close to the maximum.”
“It’s not like they were not feeding their child or they were purposely withholding medication that they knew would assist the child but didn’t,” she said.
Emphasis mine.
See, shit like this is why I consider myself a consequentialist thinker. We spend way too much time giving people the benefit of the doubt for intentions. Because yes, they absolutely withheld medicine despite all evidence suggesting the treatment was well understood, and that resulted in the death of their child.
Oh, and the real kicker? Alberta has socialized medicine. It is in fact more expensive to self medicate in emergencies than it is to take your kid to the hospital.
Anyway, my home province seems to be doing pretty good. First we elected an ostensibly socialist party, then we started taxing the stupidly rich, and now we’re convicting people for what should be rightly considered criminal neglect.
Stay cool lovelies.
-Shiv
Do they have any other living children?
Their defence lawyer is ethically obliged to put forward the best defence for her clients, but it would appear that her clients were indeed “…purposely withholding medication that they knew would assist the child…”.
They knew what they were doing, and deliberately did so.
In an ideal world, they would be chemically sterilised, as they are manifestly unfit, or utterly incompetent, to undertake the care of children….
At most, it would be appropriate to strip them of custodial rights, in addition to the other appropriate consequences for the negligent fatality. But I would not advocate for this kind of action as punishment.
Chemical sterilisation crosses my mind in these cases too, but it’s a step too far IMO as it denies the possibility of rehabilitation. But absolutely immediately remove any surviving children from those parents and rehome them with new identities where the parents can’t ever get at them again, and if the parents do ever choose to have another child, ensure they are watched like hawks and if there’s even a sniff of evidence of a repeat of the neglect, remove the new child too.
Denying proven medical care to a child is as unethical as denying food. Denying food is legally considered to be abuse and assault upon children, so why isn’t denying medical care?
Until a child is legally old enough to make their own decisions on medical care, parents must be legally obligated to protect that child even if and especially when it conflicts with their beliefs. Beliefs do not trump a child’s right to safety and protection, and there definitely should be consequences for those who use beliefs to endanger children.