In Idaho, as in other states, medical neglect of a child is a crime. However, if an Idaho parent (or guardian)
chooses for his child treatment by prayer or spiritual means alone
and the child suffers, even if he dies, the parent is exempt from criminal prosecution.
Not only does Idaho law shield the neglectful parents from prosecution, it prevents law enforcement and social workers from stepping in to protect a dead child’s siblings from suffering a similar fate.
Preventable deaths
The consequences of these barbaric laws were recently laid out in three maddening, heart-wrenching articles by the independent, non-profit newsroom, ProPublica. ProPublica reporters assembled law enforcement and death records involving children born into a faith-healing sect called Followers of Christ, a group we’ve covered before on SBM. The sect believes
that God heals the faithful and that life and death must be left to God’s divine will.
The news organization had medical experts review those records to determine whether the deaths would have been preventable with appropriate medical care. The review found that at least 15 babies and children died between 2015 and 2025 from illnesses that could have been successfully treated which, they concluded, was “almost certainly an undercount.”
Six deaths could not be evaluated due to incomplete or unavailable records. In four cases, experts could not say with confidence that medical care would have changed the outcome. (Although, I would think, almost certainly palliative medicine could have eased the children’s suffering.)
As well, experts identified numerous preventable losses of babies who died during birth or in utero very close to their due dates, cases labeled by the coroners as stillbirths.
The details of these deaths are horrific, gathered both from witness testimony and the conclusions of the medical experts about what the child would have experienced prior to death. These accounts are difficult to read but, unfortunately, in the torrent of news about human suffering being wrought by depraved governmental forces and medical bad actors, I felt these recent stories were not getting the attention they deserve; hence this post.
(ProPublica has also been at the forefront of digging out sundry other malfeasance, both health-related [raw milk, abortion bans, dismantling of USAID] and not, such as this recent blockbuster scoop involving a certain wedding.)
Faith-based medical neglect
A summary of some of ProPublica’s findings:
- A newborn whose condition meant that he would have been gasping for air and turning blue due to lack of oxygen before dying from pneumonia. Thirteen months later, his newborn younger brother died of the same condition, which experts suspect was from a birth-related strep infection that expectant mothers in the U.S. are routinely screened for and is entirely treatable with antibiotics.
- A 16-year-old “the size of a third grader” (62 pounds, just under 4 feet tall), whose death experts traced to a benign, treatable pituitary tumor that should have been discovered due to her stunted growth earlier in childhood. She suffered from many ailments during her brief life, her tumor sending “her body into a hormonal tailspin that destroyed her organs.”
- At least three children who died from sepsis caused by common infections that could easily have been treated with antibiotics. One boy was born “happy and alert” but, over the next couple of days, grew “darker in color, coughing up phlegm and clenching his limbs in convulsions” before dying.
- A two-year-old boy who was sick for six weeks with an untreated bacterial infection that settled in his heart and destroyed it. He had “fevers, abdominal pain, vomiting and swelling”.
- A 16-month-old who died from an intestinal condition that can be fixed with a routine, minimally invasive surgery. Left untreated, the autopsy determined, the boy’s bowels had compressed his lungs and heart, which stopped beating; his lungs were so cramped they stayed the size of a newborn’s.
- Four young children from the same family died from what appears to be untreated diabetes. They suffered from uncontrolled vomiting prior to passing away.
- Two newborns from the same family died after aspirating meconium, an extremely rare occurrence in the U.S. A healthcare provider attending a birth is trained to detect meconium aspiration and to prevent illness and death of the infant with established protocols, including prescribing antibiotics.
In fact, records show at least five sets of parents have lost multiple children.
One of the sect’s “patriarchs” defended the Followers of Christ’s thusly:
Children and babies can’t make their own decision to rely on faith healing. [He] said their parents must keep them away from the doctor to set an example, so the young ones won’t be cursed later in life by turning to medicine.
Sect members who go to the doctor are shunned by their communities to reinforce its beliefs and, in the patriarch’s words, make sure they don’t go again. Family and neighbors form a protective shield around parents whose children die from neglect, trying to isolate them from law enforcement when the deaths are investigated, according to deputies who’ve been sent to follow up when a death is reported.
“Beyond comprehension”
Not everyone in Idaho agrees with shielding parents from the consequences of their neglect. Canyon County Sheriff Kieran Donahue, one of the most vocal opponents of the state’s faith-healing laws, has sent deputies to follow up on the deaths of at least 10 Followers’ children and infants since he took office in 2013.
‘This is needless,’ Donahue said. ‘This shouldn’t be happening.’
Retired pediatrician Dr. David Peterman, who reviewed the deaths of 18 infants and children, agrees. He finds it beyond comprehension that state legislators won’t change the law.
‘How is this tolerable?’ he said. ‘I don’t understand how there could be an exception in Idaho law that allows for these children to die.’
It’s hard to imagine any rational person disagreeing, but Idaho legislators have so far resisted changing the 1971 faith-healing legislation. In fact, the state legislature, in 1976, added a law that kept children from being placed in foster care solely for lack of medical attention.
According to ProPublica,
Since 2014, [state legislators] have rejected repeated efforts to dial back Idaho’s faith-healing exemption, instead crafting legislation to further limit the role of anyone but a parent when it comes to children’s health and safety. The state has codified ‘parental rights,‘ banned vaccine requirements in schools and childcare centers, and made parental consent a prerequisite for medical care of minors. Legislators also have tried to narrow the definition of ‘medical neglect’ for all families to only the most life-threatening situations, but those attempts have failed.
Next door, in Oregon, the rollback of similar laws protecting faith-based medical neglect has resulted in prosecutions of parents who put their children at risk. This provides a “powerful incentive for parents to seek medical care” and gives the state “legal leverage to order medical care for surviving and future children”, according to ProPublica’s reporting.
Given the current political support for ill-informed medical decision-making by parents and disregard for the resulting suffering it causes, I am not optimistic that Idaho’s laws will be revised in the near term. Unfortunately, we can be certain more children will suffer and die until that happens.
