The Child Cases
How America's Religious Exemption Laws Harm Children
By Alan Rogers
University of Massachusetts Press
When a four-year-old California girl died on March 9, 1984, the state charged her mother with involuntary manslaughter because she failed to provide her daughter with medical care, choosing instead to rely on spiritual healing. During the next few years, a half dozen other children of Christian Science parents died under similar circumstances. The children's deaths and the parents' trials drew national attention, highlighting a deeply rooted, legal/political struggle to define religious freedom.
Through close analysis of these seven cases, legal historian Alan Rogers explores the conflict between religious principles and secular laws that seek to protect children from abuse and neglect. Christian Scientists argued—often with the support of mainline religious groups—that the First Amendment's "free exercise" clause protected religious belief and behavior. Insisting that their spiritual care was at least as effective as medical treatment, they thus maintained that parents of seriously ill children had a constitutional right to reject medical care.
Congress and state legislatures confirmed this interpretation by inserting religious exemption provisos into child abuse laws. Yet when parental prayer failed and a child died, prosecutors were able to win manslaughter convictions by arguing—as the U.S. Supreme Court had held for more than a century—that religious belief could not trump a neutral, generally applicable law. Children's advocates then carried this message to state legislatures, eventually winning repeal of religious exemption provisions in a handful of states.
Through close analysis of these seven cases, legal historian Alan Rogers explores the conflict between religious principles and secular laws that seek to protect children from abuse and neglect. Christian Scientists argued—often with the support of mainline religious groups—that the First Amendment's "free exercise" clause protected religious belief and behavior. Insisting that their spiritual care was at least as effective as medical treatment, they thus maintained that parents of seriously ill children had a constitutional right to reject medical care.
Congress and state legislatures confirmed this interpretation by inserting religious exemption provisos into child abuse laws. Yet when parental prayer failed and a child died, prosecutors were able to win manslaughter convictions by arguing—as the U.S. Supreme Court had held for more than a century—that religious belief could not trump a neutral, generally applicable law. Children's advocates then carried this message to state legislatures, eventually winning repeal of religious exemption provisions in a handful of states.
Original scholarship on an original topic that challenges religious exemptions to generally applicable laws. The research is thorough and the writing reflects Rogers's impressive mining of newspaper reports and judicial records.'—Chris Beneke, author of Beyond Toleration: The Religious Origins of American Pluralism
'With religious medical neglect, we are especially hungry for insight because it is so difficult to make sense of parents' watching a child wither and die before their eyes. Alan Rogers, professor of history at Boston College, provides substantial backstory on several more prominent criminal prosecutions of parents whose children died because the parents rejected medical care on religious grounds.'—Journal of Church and State
'The Child Cases presents an exhaustive and insightful legal history of the role that religious exemptions played in child abuse and manslaughter cases during the last decades of the twentieth century.'—American Historical Review
'The Child Cases invites the reader to thoroughly reflect on the free exercise of religion. The author includes historical and legal evidence, which demonstrates that an individual must learn to balance religious beliefs with legal responsibility. The book is a worthwhile read and should be used as a substantial reference by anyone working in areas of constitutional law and child abuse in the United States.'—Nova Religio
Alan Rogers is professor of history at Boston College and author of Murder and the Death Penalty in Massachusetts (University of Massachusetts Press, 2008).
