Faith healing: Oregon’s double standard adds insult to injuries | OregonLive.com
“It just has built up over the years,” says Tomei, a Democratic representative from Clackamas County, the state’s epicenter of faith-healing deaths. “And when you go the cemetery and look at the headstones and see all those children’s names, you say, ‘This is enough.’”
In the early and mid-1990s, Oregon exempted people who treat their sick children solely with prayer from most prosecution for mistreatment, homicide and other offenses. Lawmakers acted in response to pressure from the Christian Science Church, the nation’s largest religious organization favoring faith healing. Also, they didn’t want to subject parents of faith to the increasingly harsh penalties favored for serious crimes.
The decision made some sense at the time. Lawmakers weren’t fully aware of the many deaths of children whose parents belong to Followers of Christ, a church based in Clackamas County that requires members to shun medical care. They didn’t know that medical experts would classify dozens of these children’s deaths as likely preventable.
They didn’t know about the headstones, row after row.
They do now.