On
Easter Sunday in
a sleepy little suburb of
a not very big city in
Wisconsin, a tragedy occurred. an eleven year old girl, Madeline Kara Neuman, who was called Kara by her friends and family, died of
diabetic ketoacidosis. Her parents, who owned a local coffee shop called MOnkey MO's, did not seek medical attention despite the urging of her family because
they believed that they should heal their daughter through prayer alone. When she died, her mother and her father lamented that their faith was not strong enough.
Kara's mother, Leilani, is a follower of an online ministry called AmericasLastDays.com which is filled with stories of people who have healed all kinds of diseases with prayer and the laying on of hands and various "statistics" about the dangers of doctors. Since Kara had not seen a doctor since she was three years old, no one ever warned her about the dangers of diabetes, and despite the fact that the symptoms of ketoacidosis are very severe, and Kara even went into a COMA, when her aunt called the ambulance they had to turn them away because Leilani fought and would not allow the ambulance to take their daughter.
I was so mad when I heard about this I suggested that these people be hanged, and told to pray that the rope would break. Then if it didn't, because God found them unworthy, that they should be nailed to the church door as a warning to others. The journalists at the Wausau Daily Herald are trying to keep people from judging, and I'm normally very in favor of free speech, but... this is a little girl who was homeschooled by her parents and may have died thinking that if her faith had been stronger, or if she hadn't done some small thing that constitutes a sin in the mind of an eleven year old child, that God would have healed her. Wisconsin law allows for faith healing, state statute 948.03(6) has a piece that says : "A person is not guilty of an offense under this section solely because he or she provides a child with treatment by spiritual means through prayer alone for healing in accordance with the religious method of healing … in lieu of medical or surgical treatment." Still, I've never heard of anyone outside the Christian religion who was not prosecuted for trying this, so even though the good reverend over at that site thinks that Kara's parent's are being persecuted, they should count themselves VERY lucky.
Belief is one thing, but these people, who were entrusted with the well being of another human being, a helpless child, who they loved, LET HER DIE. There's got to be a limit on faith. if you want to make the choice as a consenting adult to die of a treatable disease for your faith, that's fine, but your fifth grader is not of age to consent to die in a war or have sex, and she shouldn't be of age to be a martyr, either. This isn't parenting, it's murder, and it's sick.