Towards a New Lens of Analysis: The History and Future of Religious Exemptions to Child Neglect Statutes
Date
2010
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Richmond Journal of Law and the Public Interest
Abstract
The crucial distinction to be drawn while analyzing parental rights is between lifestyle and life. Parents, churches, schools, and the community have an important role in shaping a child’s lifestyle. It is precisely these influences that determine why one child plays baseball while another plays the trombone, or why one goes to a synagogue while another goes to a cathedral. These influences also determine, to a large part, whether a child goes to college or ends up in jail. But nowhere are these social and familial forces given the ability to determine whether a child has a life or not. This line is crucial. It is fundamental. And it must be protected, even at the risk of offending a parent’s religious choices. Though they may also violate the Establishment Clause, religious exemptions to child neglect statutes are an unconstitutional violation of children’s right to equal protection under the law. Challenging them as such is a potentially more effective and pragmatic endeavor than an attack grounded in the First Amendment. A long line of cases has established that parents may not use religion as an excuse for neglect; the state, meanwhile, may not use the type of family a child was born into as grounds for different treatment. By removing these exemptions, children are protected while being respected as full people under the Constitution. Children are dying needlessly every year, and it is time to re-frame the debate, look through the lens of Equal Protection, and do what is right. (Author Text)
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Keywords
child abuse, neglect, religion, law, medical neglect, refusal of medical care, law, review
Citation
Engle, G. (2010). Towards a New Lens of Analysis: The History and Future of Religious Exemptions to Child Neglect Statutes. Richmond Journal of Law and the Public Interest, 14, 375-399.