Idaho Senate kills bill to repeal exemption on faith-healing parents who decline treatment of their
Idaho Senate kills bill to repeal exemption on faith-healing parents who decline treatment of their children
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2017/mar/21/idaho-senate-kills-only-legislation-of-the-year-on/
BOISE – After two hours of passionate debate Tuesday, the Idaho Senate rejected a proposal allowing faith-healing parents to be civilly liable when their children die or suffer permanent injury due to a lack of treatment.
The bill proposed a series of changes to Idaho’s existing faith-healing exemption from civil liability for child neglect, but made no changes in the state’s criminal laws, which include a religious exemption from prosecution for faith-healing parents.
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But Sen. Jim Rice, R-Caldwell, told the Senate, “I think it is fundamentally wrong to criminalize people for the free exercise of religion.”
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“I feel this bill is a taking of a right.” said Heider, the Senate Health and Welfare Committee chairman.
Senate Majority Leader Bart Davis, R-Idaho Falls, supported the bill “a small step” in the right direction since a bill that allowed criminal prosecution of a faith-healing parent is unlikely to win support.
“Do you think that bill is going to pass?” he asked the Senate. “It won’t. Because this floor is reluctant to punish people criminally for a firmly held religious belief.”
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In August, the Idaho Child Fatality Review Team published its third annual report, this one reviewing child deaths in 2013, and it found that five Idaho children died that year because their parents’ religious beliefs prevented them from seeking medical treatment. That brought the total over three years of reviews to 10 Idaho children, although the report noted that not all such deaths are reported.
Idaho is one of just seven states with a faith-healing exemption from its manslaughter laws, according to data submitted to the interim legislative panel by legislative staffers. Many more states have faith-healing exemptions from civil liability for abuse, neglect or failure to report; smaller numbers have exemptions from misdemeanor or felony criminal charges for non-support, neglect or injury to a child. Idaho has exemptions in all four areas. Only one other state, Virginia, has all four exemptions.
Washington has religious exemptions from both civil liability and felony charges of child neglect, but not misdemeanor neglect charges or manslaughter.
A faith-healing sect called the Followers of Christ has a large community in southern Idaho. There, a 2015 report from the Governor’s Task Force on Children at Risk calculated a child mortality rate of 31 percent from 2002 to 2011, compared to a statewide rate of 3.37 percent.
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