Ignorance Kills

A news item recently caught my attention. "A 10 year old Nicaraguan girl, Hazel Borge, could soon die because her parents devout Jehovah’s Witnesses are refusing to allow doctors to give her a blood transfusion." [January 20, 2000 MANAGUA, Nicaragua (Reuters)]

“The committee in charge of evaluating special cases held an urgent meeting at the hospital to evaluate this special case,” said Ramiro Lopez, a director of The Velez Hospital in Managua. “The committee decided that a blood transfusion is necessary, because otherwise the girl will die. We told this to the girl’s parents, and they came here with legal representation from the Jehovah’s Witness Organization. They signed a document in which the parents are absolutely opposed to the blood transfusion,” said Lopez. The girl was in a car accident on January 10 in which both her legs were fractured and she lost a lot of blood. But Jehovah’s Witnesses have deep religious convictions against accepting whole blood, red blood cells and white blood cells.

In spite of the parents’ wish not to give the child a blood transfu¬sion, doctors at the hospital went ahead with the procedure to save the girl’s life after she went into shock. Doctors at the hospital have warned that unless further surgery is performed on the girl, she could once again go into shock and could possibly die. She requires urgent surgery to amputate one of her legs, which would require more blood transfusions a procedure her parents are against. “Doctors have spoken with us, and . . . the blood is not going to repair my girl’s leg. The blood is not the solution. The solution is to repair her leg,” said Maria Felix Bermudes, the girl’s mother.

The case has drawn great public interest. “The state must protect children and teen agers who are in risky situations. In this situation, it is obvious that the girl is in danger due to the parents’ decision,” said children’s court Judge Venicia Venegas. I have not been able to find out her eventual fate. Only that first news report appears when I Google her name.

What goes through your mind when you read of such cases? Do you think, “The state ought to do something to force the parents to let their child be treated” or do you think, “It’s lucky we have laws which prevent the state from interfering with parents’ decisions about how to raise their children”? Do you admire the parents’ faith, which keeps them obedient to their understanding of God even when their child is at risk? Even when authority figures pressure them to change their mind? Or do you censure them for being so foolish as to think that God might not want them to take advantage of everything modern medicine has to offer?

It’s a hard call, isn’t it? I think they’re wrong, of course, in their interpretation of God’s requirements. I’m not sure I want a government that has the right to force them to violate their beliefs. There are some things that are worth dying for, and obedience to God’s commands is one of them. But what about when the life of a child is at stake? The open question is, whose God? Whose interpretation of God? Whose understanding of what God actually commands us to do? These are very tricky questions indeed, in a religiously pluralistic society.

I think the Jehovah’s witnesses are wrong, just as I think the Christian Scientists are wrong when they reject medical treatment in favor of prayer alone. But there are a lot of things that you and I as orthodox Christians believe that non-believers find just as incomprehensible, that we wouldn’t want the government to ban. When Utah was admitted to statehood, our society held enough beliefs in common for the government’s ban on polygamy to hold, but I don’t think we could do it nowadays.

It’s a crazy world, isn’t it. . . people who think nothing of aborting an unwanted child think that spanking a rebellious child is cruel and unusual punishment. The same people who think that inconvenience or financial pressure or embarrassment outweigh the life of a child cannot understand that obedience to God might also outweigh a life.

Aren’t we lucky that our God doesn’t ask us to choose between our children’s lives and our call to follow Christ? Aren’t we lucky that we know with perfect clarity that our God always comes down on the side of life? How astonishingly blessed and free we are to know that YHWH God has not called for the death of a child since Abraham was let off the hook 3,500 years ago.

And how sad it was that Jephthah had not been taught the law of Moses, hadn’t grown up knowing that YHWH’s people were supposed to be different from the surrounding culture. How tragic that he didn’t know what God really wanted. If Jephthah had been properly taught, this terrible story would not be part of our Scriptures.