If we had universal health care in this country, at least one of these cases would not be a case at all. First, her son's doctor would have been able to spend enough time with her to educate her on the causes and dangers of severe obesity, and, second, she would have been able to afford the care available. It is appalling that many of our neglect cases are actually "neglect by poverty" - parents love and even may know how to care for their children (or would with some help), but simply can't afford it. What should the state do in this instance, given our current system? Leave a child to live in a vermin-infested building in disrepair (all the parent can afford to pay for), on bad quality food, with no health care, with an overwhelmed parent who wants to do right by their child but simply can't - or take the child, traumatizing it by tearing it away from a loving parent, place it in a foster home that may be abusive or neglectful (and the drastically overloaded agency barely squeaking by on a slashed budget has no resources to inspect and/or correct problems), with no way to fix the situation so the child can go home?
On the other hand, there are many parents who are truly dysfunctional and aren't going to be able to provide a healthy environment for their kids regardless of their income. Just because two human beings mated and produced offspring doesn't mean the offspring should not be protected by their community from abuse or neglect; just because two people made a baby doesn't mean they should be able to do anything they want to it, even if what they want is to deprive it of an education, of proper food and medical care and a healthy emotional life - for religious reasons or other. A person doesn't develop rights only when he or she reaches adulthood; whatever rights a parent has, a child has the same or corresponding rights. We should not value the parents' "rights" over those of the children; nor should we forget that the community has a strong and vested interest in seeing children grow to be healthy, happy and productive members of that community.
Sure, there are tough questions when it comes to what the standards should be for state intervention in child care - but the horror stories of medical care people have described are actually the exception rather than the rule, and most treatment decisions are not that controversial. That a child's parents may have powerful religious ideas or delusions should not mean the child should be deprived of a chance to live a healthy life - why should a parent's first amendment right to freedom of religion outweigh a child's due process rights, or its first amendment right to choose its own religious beliefs, if any?
Universal health care. Universal good quality education. It's less expensive in the long run.
What Makes a Parent Negligent?
After courts questioned the way they cared for their sick kids, two mothers in different states ran away with their children. Why 'neglect' is such a complicated concept, and why loving a child isn't always enough.
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The word "neglect" implies that someone has given up caring. But in cases of medical neglect by parents, it can be just the opposite. Recent, highly publicized cases of child medical neglect highlight this paradox. Take Daniel Hauser, the Minnesota boy currently on the run with his mother to avoid court-ordered medical treatment for his cancer. His parents care deeply about his health and well-being, but in a way that conflicts with the best-accepted medical practices for treating Hodgkin's lymphoma (They want to treat him with holistic therapies).
In some cases, parents don't have the ability or resources to give their children the help they need, but also can't bear to give them up, which may be the case with a South Carolina woman, Jerri Althea Gray. Gray and her son, Alexander Draper, fled the state on Thursday, May 21, allegedly to avoid a court hearing to determine if she was being medically negligent in caring for her son. If so, custody of the child would be turned over to the state Department of Social Services. Alexander, 14, weighs 555 pounds, and though authorities have cited his weight as a main concern, they also allude to more pressing medical problems that prompted social services to take action. (The South Carolina DSS issued a statement saying their involvement is always "limited to cases where health-care professionals believe a child is at risk of harm because a parent is neglecting to provide necessary medical care. DSS would not take action based on a child's weight alone.")
That day, both Gray and Draper were discovered at a laundromat in Maryland. Gray was arrested on a S.C. warrant for violating a child custody order and taken to a correctional facility in Baltimore. Her son was examined by paramedics and turned over to the Maryland Department of Social Services while arrangements were being made to get him back to his home state.
With the case of Daniel Hauser, the state was able to make a very clear argument for what they consider neglect: Daniel had cancer that was 90 percent curable with a certain treatment, and his parents were refusing that care. (Whether or not you think it's neglect is a different matter: a Newsvine poll posted on Thursday is split almost down the middle.)
We don't have nearly as much information about Alexander Draper's condition, except that the charges of neglect are in some way related to his extreme obesity. But his mother's arrest has raised questions. What constitutes medical neglect when cases aren't as clear-cut as Daniel Hauser's? It's neglect if a mother isn't giving her sick child proper medication. But what if she's missing doctor's appointments for a chronic condition? Not feeding a child is neglect, but what if a father only feeds his son donuts and soda? There's clear precedent for the state to step in if a parent isn't doing anything to stop cancer that could kill a child in six months. But what if a parent isn't doing anything to stop the onset of type 2 diabetes, a condition that could cause serious lifelong problems and eventual death?
As a matter of necessity, cases of neglect taken on by the DSS in most states are ones that are incredibly dire. "I don't think any social-service agency that's operating at all sensibly will try to look very far in the future if you're talking about things like diet," says Carl E. Schneider, a professor of internal medicine and law at the University of Michigan and a member of the president's commission on bioethics. "They're always under-funded, they always have all these acute cases to worry about, and in terms of allocation of those limited resources, you have to go where those acute problems are."
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