Protesters marched to the Idaho state Capitol on Monday with 183 child-sized, symbolic coffins, which they stacked on the Statehouse steps as they called for Idaho lawmakers to repeal the state’s faith-healing exemption giving parents immunity criminal or civil liability if they deny their children medical care and the kids die.
Protesters said at least 183 Idaho infants, children and teens have died since the exemption laws were enacted by the Idaho Legislature in the 1970s. Lawmakers have considered re-examining the faith-healing exemption for several years, but haven’t agreed to change anything in Idaho’s laws.
A faith-healing sect based in Canyon County in southern Idaho has strongly objected to repealing the exemption. Members of the Followers of Christ told lawmakers at hearings last fall and spring that they believe using medicine is a sin, akin to “sorcery” and “witchcraft.”
Canyon County Sheriff Kieran Donahue told a Senate committee last March that in his county, he’d had three children die in the previous four months under the faith-healing exemption, and called it “an embarrassment to the state.”
Idaho and Virginia are the only two states with faith-healing exemptions in four areas of its state law – manslaughter laws, civil liability for abuse or neglect, misdemeanor criminal charges for neglect or injury of a child, and felony criminal charges for neglect or injury of a child. (Spokesman-Review)
