The committee decided that, in this event, the hospital becomes a medical guardian of the child and then performs the life-saving treatment. This way, the parents can maintain their opposition to the treatment, but then the child will still receive the treatment and live.

So if the state has the authority to enforce the care of the child by penalizing it after the fact, why would they not have the authority to prevent harm to the child beforehand? It is sort of like “pre-crime” in that Tom Cruise movie. So once you grant the state the power to intervene beforehand, are you just accepting that the state will improperly act on this at some point and trusting that civil lawsuits and the threat of firing state employees will hold state power in check? I guess you are, and that might be the best we can do here. Will the 57 day absence of the child be made right by several thousand dollars? To phrase it better, will the payment of several thousand dollars, or several hundred thousand, deter the state from making similar mistaken actions in the future?

Papillon made some great points, what about the family who won’t allow their child life-saving medical care for religious reasons? I don’t know the answer to that question. I am friends with a Christian Scientist whom I admire deeply – former County Councilman Skip Mange. I don’t think I have ever had this discussion with him. I wish I had. (I also understand that it is incorrect to assume all Christian Scientists adamently adhere to the no medical care under any situation rule.)

I stand by my claim that the state made an egregious error here. I think the standard for removing a child based on the threat of harm, instead of proven harm or history of harm (such as demonstrated abuse of a prior child), needs to be extremely high. I don’t think this came anywere near the standard that should be held. For example, it was the mother herself, not just the nurse, who noticed the initial attempts at breast-feeding were not going well and the baby was having trouble breathing. But should the state have the power to intervene in such a situation ever? I guess they probably should.

And for the record, parents in Missouri have the legal right to abandon their children to the state up to a certain age by leaving the child at a hospital, etc. I have no idea if that is a positive or a negative right, but it beats the hell out of leaving the child in a dumpster, which is what it was intended to alleviate.

Tangentially, do you believe that children have a claim right on their parents? As I understand it, people who do not believe in positive rights whatsoever would say that parents do not have a moral obligation to feed and clothe their children. Parents tend to feed their children because they have a legal obligation and benevolence towards them. If it weren’t for this legal obligation, then the state would have not have the power to intervene.

They asked me to to clarify that the DSS does not have the authority to remove child from its home. They have the authority to initiate a legal process to have the court system order such an action, which is what happened here.

Blog posts require brevity, and going into the details of exactly how the state removed the child was beyond the purpose of the post. Especially since the final result was the same – the state removed the child, and then thankfully returned the child to its parents. However, the rep. from DSS left me a very polite message asking for that clarification, and I am pleased to meet his request.

I believe that the state should have the duty to intervene on behalf of those who can’t fend for themselves. Parents may prevent a child from getting a blood transfusion, as an example. I want the state to say that the child gets a transfusion.

Parents make mistakes, the state make mistakes. There are times when there is greater harm in doing nothing than in doing something. Discerning those times can be very difficult. State intervention usually prevents really bad outcomes, but also prevents full potential as well.