IV. Conclusion

HHS's policy fails to adequately protect children who are victims of religious medical neglect because:

1. the policy fails to address how the reporting system can adequately detect those children whose illnesses occur entirely outside the reporting system-especially when the parents have been given the impression that they, themselves, have no duty to provide necessary medical care;
   
   
2. it is very unclear that HHS's compliance effort which seeks to obtain Attorney General Opinions through a bureaucratic/political/legal process will yield Opinions of sufficient strength and clarity to bring states into compliance with the official HHS policy. Moreover, the policy seeks to substitute an inherently fragile and legally vulnerable secondary system as a compensation for the deficient primary statutory system of exemptions. Such a system is not adequate protection for children whose lives and health are at significant risk.

Such a policy is not worthy of the people or children of the United States. The federal government should simply state that religiously-motivated parents should have the same duty to provide necessary medical care as all other parents-to the end that no child has a greater or lesser right to live than any other child. As one children's rights organization wrote:

In order to truly protect children, there must be one standard that is neutral on religion. If a parent is not required to seek medical attention for a child, it should be because of the nature of the child's condition or situation, and not because the parent is or is not praying. When the ailment is minor, the parent, regardless of religious affiliations or lack of religion, is not required to bring the child to medical attention. Likewise, when the condition of the child presents harm or threatened harm, the child should be entitled to medical care, and the parent required to furnish the care, regardless of religious affiliation or lack of religion.

People v. Shalala, case #93-15700, in U.S. Court of Appeals, 9th Circuit, Amicus Brief, CHILD, Inc.

HHS should have the political courage to establish and implement a policy that religious exemptions to necessary medical care for children are inconsistent with state efforts to prevent child abuse and neglect.

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Table of Contents:

1. HHS Policy on State Religious Exemptions
   
   
2. HHS Policy Jeopardizes the Lives of Children
   HHS Policy on Transferring Responsibility for Providing Medical Care From Parents to the Reporting System, Coupled With the Reporting System's Inherent Difficulty in Detecting Medical Neglect, Flagrantly Jeopardizes the Lives of Children
   
   
3. Civil Exemptions Undermine Parental Legal Responsibility
   Despite Denials by HHS, Civil Exemptions Undermine Parental Legal Responsibility to Provide Care
   
   
4. HHS's Current Attempts to Clarify Are Limited and Problematic
   HHS's Current Attempts to Clarify the Impact of the Exemptions on State Reporting Systems are Meeting With Only Limited and Problematic Results and May Be Intrinsically Incapable of Success
   
   
5. Conclusion

Appendix: Cases of Childhood Deaths Due to Parental Religious Objection to Necessary Medical Care