How far goes freedom of religion ?

Question

Right now in Quebec city there are parents refusing to give their newborn baby twins a blood transfusion to save their little life pretexting their religion beleives forbids them (Jehovah witnesses). The court had to take this matter into their hands and proceed with the transfusion. The parents are outraged and are taking their case to Supreme court. Those parents have dying newborn babies and spend their time in their lawyers office coming up with strategies to let their babies die. Same thing happend with sixtuplets in Vancouver and the Supreme Court had to take the children away from their parents to proceed with the medical treatment.

How can you let a religion brainwash you to the point you will let your children die?

@ A C: If you enjoy reading, I recommend the great Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and his exposé on how we elude our responsibilities.

@Papa Bear: You`re an alarmist. People like you create fear and feelings of distrust amoung the population. You`re the kind of person who will scream fire at the smell of smoke only. I had 5 blood transfusion in my life and i`m strong and healthy. Without a blood transfusion I would have died 20 years ago leaving my baby without a mother.

Answer 1

"How far goes freedom of religion "

until you start hurting others.

Answer 2

This is a complicated issue.
Freedom can be an utopic ideal or a dangerous beast. But who is in the position to make the right determination? Who knows what is truth and what is not?
Many times government errs on the side of life in detriment of a persons freedom to excercise hisher religion but its always a dangerous thing for a free society every time
an individual (s) (including the government) force someone to do something against hisher will.
There would be two sides on this argument:
-the obligation of society to protect the life of its members
-the obligation of society to respect the privacy of its members and their freedom.
Its not many times an easy thing to determine.
In this case, the government seems to be taking a religious position which is practically expressing that there is no other life after this one, that we cease to exist after death, so theres an urgent sense to preserve the life of the baby.
The parents seem to believe theres another life or simply in a certain set of values which might indicate them transfussion of blood is something bad. Even if they were to think that theres no another life, they might still do it for what they perceive to be a spiritual moral value.
So basically the state might be actually
1. stablishing a state religion which factually is denying the validity of the spiritual values of the parents
2.conducting an attack on the beliefs of the parents
But in the other hand, some people would say the government is just protecting the life of the child and if it doesnt do anything would be an accomplice to murder.
I think this is a complicated issue: people have the right to determine their religion and how to apply it and government has the right to defend the life of the people, including the children of parents.
But in this case i lean towards the parents.
(One note: the word brainwash is controversial in this case unless you know what the truth about all is. Do god exist or not? Do the bible speak the word of god or not? Are the regulations in the bible to be followed or not? In what manner should the bible regulations should be followed?
Do you have the right answer for all of this? Or only an opinion?
I think that its a clash of cultures and the issue here is the lack of knowledge about what is truth and what is not truth. Which actually no one may know.)
The government believes -seems to be- that giving blood transfussion is something good, the parents -it is something bad.
I think in this case the parents have the right to exercise their religion and dont give blood transfussion to their baby. It is not a case where the parents are going to stab their baby for their religious beliefs (in which case i think they go way over the line) but simply are taking an inaction trusting god. So they have the right to do it.
And the question comes, what if the government one day were to believe blood transfussion is bad for the baby and prevent parents from doing it in its belief its protecting life?
Or what if the blood transfussion ultimately infects the child with aids and in the future doctors were to determine there was not even a need for a blood transfussion?
So i think here government should leave the parents alone and let them make the choice.

Answer 3

CUT AND PASTE QUESTION
MONTHS OLD STORY
GET A LIFE

You must have watched Knocking the other night and are in a real panic they are right.

This question is getting old, only 10% of those refusing blood are witnesses.

As for people claiming that abstaining (Acts 15:20) only refers to eating, does that mean that only oral sex is bad and that all other forms of fornication are okay?

UCLA now performs bloodless transplants. Google “Bloodless Surgery” and you will find 150 hospitals now offer bloodless options to all their patients.

There is so much in the Bible that they could not have understood the science behind why something should or should not be done. In our modern times, we are learning just how the science fits. A good example was when God instructed his people to no longer allow marriages between close relatives. They didn’t understand what genetics was, or why for 2000 years it was okay, and than it wasn’t. Now, we know why.

There is no safe blood transfusion, even if there is no infectious agent present in it. Every transfusion lowers the body's immunal response in the exact same manner as AIDS does. There may or may not be any connection, but the fact is it leaves you open very RARE, not regular diseases, just like AIDS. It still requires coming into contact with the disease for it to become a problem.

That aside, there is the growing problems with contamination of the blood supply.

I'm a taxi cab driver in Kansas City. Ask most any cab driver or taxi passenger in the area who Papa Bear is and they will tell you.

In the Spring of 2006, there was a conference here of reps of Blood Services, from all over the world. They were here to learn a new labeling system. Up until this year, there was no uniform labeling system for blood, causing mismatches and other problems.

I had some passengers from London and I asked them about an article I read that England was importing thousands of pinks of blood a year from the U.S. because of contamination of their local supply by Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (Mad Cow). They said they were, but the practice has been discontinued, as the U.S. supply was no longer considered safe within the parameters they set, in other words, what is an allowable percentage of contamination.

They now get it from Australia. Apparently, Canadian is also not considered safe. She said we are fooling ourselves if we think our supply was anywhere near being safe. There are no tests for Mad Cow that can be done on blood. It can only be confirmed after death. There has also been an increasing rate of viral zoonotic (Rabies).

The sale of blood and blood products is big money, to where there is a growing problem with over bleeding of those who donate or sell their blood. When you over bleed, the immune system gets activated, causing a production of chemicals to create clots. That can be a problem for those receiving the blood, to suddenly get a blockage in a vein.

It should also be noted that strict Judaism also believes the blood is the soul, which is why when there is terrorist bombing, they clean up every last bit of blood to be buried, even chipping up the roads.

The fact is that what the Jws have done for over 50 years has made the care of patients safer. It is why you must give permission to have your child treated. There is also one benefit of their work for those who do take transfusions. It had driven down the cost of blood as corporations compete to get hospitals to buy from them.

So, if people want to hide their heads and think their safe, go right ahead, but I'll stay with the 90% of non-JWs who are also refusing blood.


Quality Alternatives to Transfusion
http://www.watchtower.org/e/hb/index.htm?article=article_03.htm

Answer 4

I think it's ironic that

if you are willing to allow your children to die for your country,
You are a hero.

If you are willing to allow your children to die for your God,
You are a fanatic.

Having said this,

NO JEHOVAH'S WITNESS WANTS THEIR CHILDREN TO DIE.

That is why we take them to Doctors and Hospitals to begin with.

As to your testimony of 'I would have died 20 years ago without blood' is at best a stretching of the truth.

No Doctor can honestly say 'this person will die without a transfusion'

It takes two to three days for the blood from a transfusion to do more than the salt water transfusion.

At the time of the transfusion, blood and salt water are equal, they expand the volume of the existing blood in your system.

If you have had as many transfusions as you have said, then I would thank God that those transfusions didn't kill you.

Are you willing to die for a man (your country) or are you willing to die for God, who has the ability to restore you to perfect life?

Ps.146:3 Do not put YOUR trust in nobles,
Nor in the son of earthling man, to whom no salvation belongs.

4 His spirit goes out, he goes back to his ground;
In that day his thoughts do perish.

5 Happy is the one who has the God of Jacob for his help,
Whose hope is in Jehovah his God,

6 The Maker of heaven and earth,
Of the sea, and of all that is in them,
The One keeping trueness to time indefinite,

Answer 5

Parents who neglect their children entirely, or who seem motivated by some fascination with "martyrdom" should not be surprised when doctors and governmental administrators feel compelled to step in.

...But is that the case with Jehovah's Witness parents?


What is to prevent the government (in its infinite wisdom) from deciding that a child with nausea must be given marijuana cigarettes to smoke? What if a cancer patient's parents preferred chemotherapy but the government insisted on radiation therapy?

It is arrogant and totalitarian when government or a handful of doctors insists that THEY should have the only right to choose a course of treatment, especially when responsible parents are thoughtfully requesting a different course of treatment. It would seem that when parents give clear evidence of studiously working to protect and prolong their child's life and best interests, the parents should be given the deference and respect befitting any other serious family decision.


Ironically, the fact remains undisputed that many MULTIPLES more have died as a direct or indirect result of a blood transfusion than have died from a conscientious decision to pursue other medical treatments.

Fair-minded healthcare experts admit that the medical technologies exist to treat literally every illness and injury without resorting to the old-fashioned infusion of whole blood, plasma, platelets, or red/white blood cells. Perhaps pro-blood activists (and/or anti-Witness critics) ignore the fact that Jehovah's Witnesses accept all minor blood fractions, so if there is some targeted need then a Witness will accept a targeted treatment (the only objections are to those four components which approximate actual blood).





It is not Jehovah's Witnesses who decide that blood is sacred; it is Almighty God who declares it so, as the Divine Author of the Holy Bible!

Jehovah's Witnesses are not anti-medicine or anti-technology, and they do not have superstitious ideas about some immortal "soul" literally encapsulated in blood. Instead, as Christians, the Witnesses seek to obey the very plain language of the bible regarding blood.

Jesus Christ, as God's spokesman and as Head of the Christian congregation, made certain that the early congregation reiterated, recorded, and communicated renewed Christian restrictions against the misuse of blood (it would hardly have been necessary to remind Christians to abstain from murderous bloodguilt).

It would seem that all conscientious Christians would feel bound by the bible's words in "the Apostolic Decree". Ironically, this decree was the first official decision communicated to the various congregations by the twelve faithful apostles (and a handful of other "older men" which the apostles had chosen to add to the first century Christian governing body in Jerusalem). God and Christ apparently felt (and feel) that respect for blood is quite important.

Here is what the "Apostolic Decree" said, which few self-described Christians obey or even respect:

(Acts 15:20) Write them [the various Christian congregations] to abstain from things polluted by idols and from fornication and from what is strangled [the meat of which would contain blood] and from blood.

(Acts 15:28-29) For the holy spirit and we ourselves have favored adding no further burden to you, except these necessary things, 29 to keep abstaining from things sacrificed to idols and from blood and from things strangled [the meat of which would contain blood] and from fornication. If you carefully keep yourselves from these things, you will prosper.


Quite explicitly, the Apostolic Decree plainly forbids the misuse of blood by Christians (despite the fact that nearly every other provision of former Jewish Mosaic Law was recognized as unnecessary). It seems odd therefore, that literally one Christian religion continues to teach that humans must not use blood for any purpose other than honoring Almighty God.

A better question would ask: How can other self-described Christian religions justify the fact that they don't even care if their adherents drink blood and eat blood products?


Jehovah's Witnesses recognize the repeated bible teaching that blood is specially "owned" by God, and must not be used for any human purpose. Witnesses do not have any superstitious aversion to testing or respectfully handling blood, and Witnesses believe these Scriptures apply to blood and the four primary components which approximate "blood". An individual Jehovah's Witness is likely to accept a targeted treatment for a targeted need, including a treatment which includes a minor fraction derived from plasma, platelets, and/or red/white blood cells.

Learn more:
http://watchtower.org/e/hb/
http://watchtower.org/library/vcnb/article_01.htm

Answer 6

As much as I'd like to say dumb people shouldn't have kids. I know children can surpass their parents intelligence sometimes with great ease.

The legal system is pretty messed up. I have yet to hear a politician say we're going to fix this issue that only effects 100 people in a year. Like they'll get mass votes. It's just the way it is.

Answer 7

Tough question--the parents generally lose, but often it's too late. It's a particular problem with the Jehovah Witnesses, frankly. Freesom of religion should never be extended to endanger the life any other person, expecially a child.

Answer 8

I'm Christian, but I dont agree with JW doctrine, if I werent so afraid of needles (literal phobia) I'd give blood... oh wait, I cant I'm anaemic, or have been recently and havent had my blood tested lately, for the one reason already mentioned... and, if I needed it, I would willingly have a blood transfusion. I'm also an organ donor, and again, if I needed one I would accept an organ to save my life...

Answer 9

.You are so right! God gave us the ability to think, make decisions and know right from wrong. How can it be wrong to save children and loved ones from unnecessary death. I am a Cristian and believe that if someone is meant to die, they will die regardless of what we do. But it is plain ignorant to not even try and save someones life with the gifts of medicine and technology. God gave us the gift of knowledge to learn and help us live. To deny a babies life because of religion is cruel and I believe they were brainwashed. No one in their right mind would do nothing to save a life..

Answer 10

Although I believe that the parents are misinterpreting the Bible.

In my opinion, the court has a right to step in to protect the child from emminant threat to life or health. What I do not see is the courts stepping to allow things such as abortion without parental consent.

Answer 11

How far does the power of the state go? The courts decision may affect more than the case you mention.