The Erosion Of Liberty Marches On Even In A "Red State" Like Indiana

I read the local news this morning to check out the aftermath of our minor snow storm last night and saw this news headline: DeKalb woman accused of unlicensed midwifery. I pretty much knew right away who that was and sure enough when I read the story it was confirmed.

DeKalb County prosecutors have accused a 55-year-old St. Joe woman of helping deliver babies without a midwife’s license.

Barbara S. Parker told an investigator that she assisted in 48 deliveries in 2012 and that she has averaged 60 to 70 deliveries a year over the past five years, according to court papers.

Parker faces three felony counts of practicing midwifery without a license. The charges stem from three deliveries she performed in early August. 

We know the Parkers quite well. In fact I stopped over at their house on Friday to see about renting their boar to breed our lady pig but no one was home. Turns out the reason no one was home was that Barb had been arrested. As sometimes happens there are difficult deliveries and in two especially difficult cases last year babies died in childbirth. Of course that is not unique or even particularly more common with home births. The U.S. has a less than stellar rate of infant mortality, ranking 34th in the world between Lithuania and Belarus and well below Cuba, with an infant mortality rate of 6.81 out of every 1000 live births. Something on the order of 99% of those births happen in hospitals oddly enough. The Amish in our area use midwives for their normal births and speak highly of Barb. Childbirth is about as natural as breathing, eating and sleeping but it does and always has carried risks. What is different in this case is that when a professional with the blessing of the state attends a birth where a child dies, it is just a statistic. When a non-professional without the blessing of the state attends a birth and a child dies it is time for the state to spring to action!

We have had all eight of our children in hospitals with the last two births attended by a midwife. If we were having more children we would probably still choose to go to a hospital to deliver so I obviously think that if someone wants to go to a hospital that is certainly fine. It is also fine if a mother and father choose to have their child at home after making an informed decision. Many home birth advocates take the accurate position that delivering a baby is a natural event, not a disease. I liked this quote from the NY Times article linked below:

"Midwifery is an autonomous profession," Ms. Ayres said. "It's an art and a science that predates the medical model of care. Midwifery sees birth as normal and basically safe.

"It's made safer by reliance on the woman's power," she continued. "The medical model assumes the woman is passive and her body needs to be acted upon. Every birth is presented as a potential disaster from which every woman needs to be protected and potentially rescued."

Our culture treats pregnancy as a medical condition and classify maternity leave as disability. The idea of a woman of all people doing anything more than staying in a hospital bed, pumped full drugs and waiting to be told to push is preposterous! It reminded me of a Monty Python skit about the delivery room...

Woman in Labor: What do I do?

Doctor: Yes?

Woman in Labor: What do I do?

Doctor: Nothing dear, you're not qualified!

It is funny but not. Of all the people in the delivery room, only the father and the baby have less input than the mother who is delivering. Don't get me wrong, most labor & delivery nurses are great but they operate in a pretty controlled system that is governed by hospital policy, insurance companies and lawyers. Like so many other parts of our lives we have subcontracted our most basic functions to professionals.

Midwives in our area deliver a lot of Amish babies at home. The Amish will deliver at home whether they have permission or not and whether they have a competent midwife or not. Barb's arrest is not unique. Just a quick google search yields the names Jennifer Louisa Williams, Irena Keeslar and Mary Helen Ayres. with stories like:

Prosecution of Midwife Casts Light on Home Births

Arrested Midwife Says She Won’t Deliver Babies in Indiana Anymore

Bloomington midwife arrested for practicing without a license

That is just in Indiana and just a quick search. I am not sure if Indiana is unique in this crusade against "unlicensed midwifery" but certainly there are those who seem bent on stamping out this dangerous criminal element in our midst (from the above story Arrested Midwife says...)

Mike Rinebold, director of government relations for the Indiana State Medical Association, is hoping that will change. 

“We are thankful there is a prosecutor in LaGrange County who is willing to enforce the laws,” Rinebold said.

For the uninitiated, "director of government relations" is a fancy title for what we commonly call "lobbyist". When you start to take back autonomy over things that the government and industry groups have decided you can't be trusted with, you better watch out! According to Mary Ann Griffin of the Indiana Midwives Association, midwives have drawn the ire of the Indiana medical lobby who are blocking a law pending for 17 years to legalize certified professional midwives (same story):

“We are being stopped by the Indiana State Medical Association, which has a powerful lobby. I’ve met with them many times. They have told us that we have been their number one priority. This little tiny group of midwives. There are about only about 15 CPMs in Indiana. It’s a tiny group. We serve 1,000 families a year who want to have a homebirth.”


Glad to see the lobbyists at the Indiana State Medical Association are on the job keeping Amish women safe from midwives!

This is all part of a disturbing pattern and it is all related. Drinking unadulterated milk from a cow. Eating food that hasn't been approved by our government (the same government that says Twinkies are safe). Giving birth to a child outside of a hospital. Teaching your children yourself in your home rather than shipping them off to an institutional school. These are all basic liberties that are under constant assault by overzealous regulators egged on by the lobbyists for international food conglomerates. The general attitude is that people are too dumb to be left to their own devices. Like so many actions by big institutions it has an unintended (or perhaps intended) consequence. The more the state and its enablers coddle the population, the less independent and capable we become. Oddly enough when you don't expect anything from people, you don't get anything from them. Women can't deliver outside of a hospital, how will they know what to do! Moms aren't qualified to raise and educate their own children, mothers need to get jobs in a cubicle shuffling papers while the professionals in daycare and public schools raise their children. People can't make choices in what to eat even if they want to without facing the ire of the militarized food police. Even in the church we don't trust people so we encourage the Body of Christ to "invite people to church" so they can be ministered to by professionals and send money to missions organizations where the professionals can reach the lost.

As long as people are cowed and imprisoned by the state for carrying out the most basic functions in life, our cherished slogan "Land of the Free and Home of the Brave" will continue to be at best an empty saying and at worst an outright lie.

The irony of this story appearing in the DETROIT News is lost on him

In one of the most ignorant hit pieces to grace the pages of a major newspaper in a long time, Detroit News writer Ron French makes the case that because of a couple of issues of overt child abuse, homeschool kids are in danger in their own homes from their parents and that the state needs the authority to monitor homeschooled kids. His article Lax home-school laws put kids at risk links a few isolated cases of child abuse, which is already illegal, to homeschooling which is perfectly legal in the state of Michigan. Because homeschooled kids are not in the public school system where the teachers can allegedly spot and report abuse, they are in danger.

Michigan has one of the most lenient home school laws in the nation, giving tens of thousands of families the freedom to teach their children in the manner they want without government interference. But timid and sporadic enforcement of the law's minimal requirements has been exploited by some unscrupulous parents hiding abuse or educational neglect.

Because the state is barred from collecting any data on home school students, it's impossible to know how many parents may be abusing the law or how well those students are doing academically. But at least two deaths can be traced to parents pulling their children from public schools to squelch abuse complaints, authorities say. In both cases, parents claimed they were home schooling their children despite having no books or educational materials in their homes.

Others have used home schooling as an excuse to keep children at home to care for younger siblings or ailing parents, without providing any educational materials.

Just what can be done in such cases -- and who can do it -- is so unclear that some officials call a false claim of home schooling a "get-out-of-jail-free card."

"As long as home schooling is as lax as it is," said Charlotte Smith, a state Office of Children's Ombudsman intake officer, "it's an avenue for parents to hide abuse."

"At least two deaths". When you only have two deaths that can be linked in any way to homeschooling, using "at least two deaths" is a cheap way of implying that their may be countless kids killed in their homes by evil homeschooling parents. So based on two incidents, incidents that have only an ancillary relation to homeschooling, Mr. French wants the state of Michigan to have greater control and oversight of homeschooling. This editorial is typical stuff from those who think that the state, not parents, knows what is best for kids.

The tragic irony of this is that Mr. French, writing in Detroit, thinks that kids are safer going to a public school because of the increased "oversight". Tell that to the seven kids shot on June 30 in front of a Detroit Public School:

Gunmen in a green minivan opened fire on a group of teenagers waiting at a bus stop near a Detroit school on Tuesday, wounding seven including two who were in critical condition, authorities said.

Tell me again, where are kids "safest" if that is the concern? That is just one of the many incidents of school violence in the Detroit schools. Not to mention the report on education in his own paper that sported this headline: Detroit parents want DPS teachers, officials jailed over low test scores. Might I suggest that the problem with education in Michigan, whether in results or safety, is not found in "lax" homeschooling laws but in the public school system. My kids are getting a good education and are very unlikely to get shot in front of my house. Detroit kids have the worst math scores in the country. He wants to give the same people who give us results like that more control over education in Michigan? Public school teachers have a hard enough time trying to teach kids math and English, I think it is insane to add to that "child abuse spotter".

Mr. French, writing for the Detroit News, ought to focus his energy on the shooting gallery that we call the Detroit Public School system. Leave the parents of Michigan who choose to educate their kids at home instead of turning them over to the state alone. We aren't the problem.

The Homeschool Legal Defense Association wrote an excellent rebuttal to Mr. French, you can read it here.

Here is a tricky and dangerous question

Dr. Mohler mentioned a recent article in the New York Times dealing with faith healing, parents refusing medical care for their minor children. This issue pops up periodically, typically when a child is severely injured or in this case dies. It sounded chilling, so I went to the article and read it in its entirety. The event cited in the NYT happened in Wisconsin…

WESTON, Wis. — Kara Neumann, 11, had grown so weak that she could not walk or speak. Her parents, who believe that God alone has the ability to heal the sick, prayed for her recovery but did not take her to a doctor.

After an aunt from California called the sheriff’s department here, frantically pleading that the sick child be rescued, an ambulance arrived at the Neumann’s rural home on the outskirts of Wausau and rushed Kara to the hospital. She was pronounced dead on arrival.
The county coroner ruled that she had died from diabetic ketoacidosis resulting from undiagnosed and untreated juvenile diabetes. The condition occurs when the body fails to produce insulin, which leads to severe dehydration and impairment of muscle, lung and heart function.
----
About a month after Kara’s death last March, the Marathon County state attorney, Jill Falstad, brought charges of reckless endangerment against her parents, Dale and Leilani Neumann. Despite the Neumanns’ claim that the charges violated their constitutional right to religious freedom, Judge Vincent Howard of Marathon County Circuit Court ordered Ms. Neumann to stand trial on May 14, and Mr. Neumann on June 23. If convicted, each faces up to 25 years in prison.

Set aside for a moment the issue of refusing any sort of medical care for Christians. That is a whole can of worms that really isn’t pertinent to the bigger question. There are precedents in the Bible for treatment of medical conditions, not necessarily a slew of antibiotics every time your kid gets a cold, but some kind of treatment beyond prayer. For example, Paul urges Timothy to take a little wine for his frequent stomach ailments in 1 Timothy 5:23. So setting aside the issue of modern medicine or natural remedies, the issue I want to look at has less to do with the specific example of this case (faith healing) and more to do with the general practice and protection of religious beliefs in a pluralistic, secular society. The statement that Dr. Mohler pointed out and that really struck me as well was this statement from the presiding judge:

“The free exercise clause of the First Amendment protects religious belief,” the judge wrote in his ruling, “but not necessarily conduct.”

So what this judge is saying is that the First Amendment protects your right to believe whatever you want, but not necessarily to practice your religion however you want. I don’t want to be Chicken Little here, because I know that the law exempts parents in a lot of circumstances. But also there is the issue that while the laws of an individual state protect parents, those laws can be reversed and the underlying issue is the Constitutional expression of religion and what that does or does not apply to.

What does the First Amendment say? A lot of people appeal to the First Amendment but not many actually look to see what the wording was or ask "what does it really say"? People throw the word “rights” around cavalierly but there are certain rights enumerated in the Constitution and there are lots of things that are not spoken of. This is what the First Amendment actually says and concerns:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Note that the key here is religious expression or exercise. Exercise necessarily implies not just belief but outward expression. People often say that the First Amendment protects our “freedom of religion”, but what is at stake here is not merely belief but practice as well.

Where I am troubled is the tension between parental rights and the perceived obligation of the state toward children. It is pretty easy to look at seemingly obvious cases of neglect and say the state should step in. It is harder though when you alter the fundamental ideal that the default is that parents have the right to make decisions for their children. It is not a stretch, and in fact has become law in many places, to see this intrusion spreading beyond merely issues where parents withhold medical treatment and into determining what is or is not appropriate discipline for children. Beating a child to death is not discipline but many assume that any sort of corporal correction for children is inherently child abuse. We have administered stern correction to our children on a fairly regular basis (eight kids=lots of discipline!) and there are some who would say that what we do, while commonplace a generation ago and for most of human history, amounts to child abuse. There is a stream of thought in some circles of academia that seems to be gaining credence that even religious instruction amounts to abuse of children. In other words, you are free to breed if you must but the state and the academics will decide what your kids will think, learn and how they will behave. It is not difficult to see where applications of a narrow interpretation of the First Amendment as merely protecting belief and not practice can lead to outlawing of corporal punishment and homeschooling. A perfect example of this was the raid on the polygamist compound in Texas where one unsubstantiated rumor of abuse led to armed law enforcement officials swooping in and removing hundreds of children from their homes. It took weeks for these children to be reunited with their parents. I am sure that the members of the FLDS cult assumed that could never happen, but it did and we had better be vigilant in our suburban homes and orderly mainstream churches because the same thing could happen to us.

Thus our quandary. No one likes to see an 11 year old die from a very treatable disease. The impulse can very easily be to wonder why the state didn’t step in. But when you read words like: ““The free exercise clause of the First Amendment protects religious belief, but not necessarily conduct.”, it can be chilling. Where do we draw the line? What is to regulate the well-meaning, in some cases, intrusion by the state into parental rights? The law runs on precedent and if the precedent becomes that the First Amendment, especially as it pertains to parents and children, only covers belief and not practice, what will stop the state from mandating public school for homeschooled kids, from banning any sort of corporal discipline in families, ultimately from banning religious instruction for children as being unhelpful to the promulgation of a pluralistic society? These are not alarmist statements, these are real questions we need to ask and think through before we look around and see our children being taken away.

Welcome to the U.S.S.A.

The United Socialist States of America

Here is a brilliant idea from our "conservative" leadership in response to the credit crisis.

WASHINGTON – The Bush administration is considering taking ownership stakes in certain U.S. banks as an option for dealing with a severe global credit crisis.

An administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because no decision has been made, said the $700 billion rescue package passed by Congress last week allows the Treasury Department to inject fresh capital into financial institutions and get ownership shares in return.

This official said all the new powers granted in the legislation were being considered as the administration seeks to deal with a serious credit crisis that has caused the biggest upheavals on Wall Street in seven decades and continues to roil global markets.

Supporters of this approach, such as Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., argue that injecting fresh capital into U.S. banks who want to participate in the program would be an effective way to bolster banks' balance sheets and get them to resume lending. Taxpayers would benefit because the government would receive an equity stake in the bank in return for providing the capital.

How exactly is that a reasonable response under our Constitution? It doesn't sound like something that jives with American political thought. It does sound like a different political document though:

Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.

Those words come from the Communist Manifesto, the fifth plank. The White House is now taking economic advice from Charles Schumer, part of which includes the state taking the means of production and credit as we buy up banks, increase regulation and potentially bailout auto makers. What next, buying General Motors and have Uncle Same getting into the auto business? Why not state commune farms? State oil companies? Call Hugo Chavez and Raul Castro, have them over to the White House! What communism failed to accomplish by military force will be finally accomplished by apathy and overwhelming self-interest. In our desire to protect our own self-interest, we are willing what we hold most dear. Of course most people have no idea what ideals we should cherish and what our country was founded on (hint, it wasn't the government holding your hand and correcting every mistake)

Heck, we might as well elect Barack Obama. Better the socialist who admits it than the socialist who pretends to believe in the free market and calls himself a conservative. We are experiencing a leadership gap in this country, no one is willing to stand up and tell people the hard truth because the soft lie is so much easier to pass. These seem like small measures, a little here and a little there but they all end up inexorably at the same place. Once the bureaucracy gets it's claws into something, it never lets go.

Dosvidaniya America

Finally some sanity in Texas

Let me say first that I find the entire FLDS cult in Texas to be reprehensible. They are both a modern reflection of the very ugliest aspects of the early, non-sanitized mormon church of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young as well as a sect of false teachers led by false prophet Warren Jeffs. Theologically they are as false a religion as Islam, mainstream mormonism, Buddhism or atheism. But the idea that based on some assumptions and what turns to likely be a hoax phone call the authorities seized 400+ children from their families is a perversion of justice and a stain on our national identity. You would think that the government would have learned from Waco and Ruby Ridge. So today's decision that Texas officials overstepped their authority in seizing every child from the FLDS compound is a welcome note of justice in an otherwise entirely unjust event.

SAN ANGELO, Texas — In a ruling that could torpedo the case against the West Texas polygamist sect, a state appeals court Thursday said authorities had no right to seize more than 440 children in a raid on the splinter group's compound last month.

The Third Court of Appeals in Austin said the state failed to show the youngsters were in any immediate danger, the only grounds in Texas law for taking children from their parents without court action.

Try to take this event and overlay it on a more familiar setting. What if someone at Willow Creek or some other mega-church was accused of abusing children, so the cops came in and took away all of the children of every family that were members of the church? What if the cops showed up in Dearborn, Michigan based on an anonymous phone call that Muslim parents were raising up children as terrorists, so the police took all of the children from their parents in the assumption that if one Muslim family was raising a child to be a terrorist, they all must be. The probable cause the police used here would never hold up in any court for any sort of offense. I have no idea what possessed the authorities in Texas to assume that they were free to round up whole families of children. It was certainly made easier because of the odd temple, the closed nature of the sect, the fact that they dress like extras on Little House on the Prairie. But being an oddball is not a crime in this country, at least not yet.

This whole episode is an example of the nanny state gone malevolent. The assumption is that parents, especially parents with strongly held religious beliefs, really especially when those religious beliefs are a bit out of the mainstream, are not to be trusted to raise their own children or make decisions based on those beliefs. There are people in this country who believe that every parent who holds deeply felt religious beliefs and teaches those beliefs to their children is inherently unfit. Some no doubt believe that teaching children old fashioned religion is tantamount to child abuse. Whether or not you agree with the FLDS doctrines and practice (which I don't), whether or not you think that it is probable that young girls are being wed to creep old guys and abused in this community (which I do), without proof that a crime is being committed these people have the same rights as any other America citizens, rights that have been grossly violated by authorities who have flaunted their authority. It is easy to brush this aside in the belief that because these people are kooks, it has no real impact on regular old Christians. But it is a slippery slope, and a pretty short one, between rounding up the kids of the FLDS and rounding up Baptist kids at a Vacation Bible School. Think that is extreme, think that could never happen in America?

Think again.