by Londo111 46 Replies latest watchtower medical
In the US, lawsuits probably wouldn't fly. The 1st amendment tends to get interpreted very liberally at all levels of the Judicial branch, often protecting groups that are doing serious harm to people, all because they cloak themselves in religion. It's extremely hard to hold a religion in the US accountable for doctrines that hurt people.
But in other countries? I could see them getting into serious legal trouble somewhere like France.
Band- How would you factor in being either shunned, having priviledges removed, or being df'd from accepting blood for yourself or child.
Designs,
I've been away for many decades. We are a nation of religious dissidents. An area I want to research soon is the European concept of freedom from religion. American courts have seen religion as a positive force. Europeans equated the Roman Catholic Church with wealth, privilege, and stoppers of progress. Many French churches were destroyed during the French revolution. I believe most Americans would see Jehovah's Witnesses as individuals who chose to listen to the GB. It is not obvious any more that the GB believes in the blood ban.
I think of my own mother, the questioner, refusing blood for my younger sister and it freaks me out. My uncle had bloodless heart surgery. He could have had surgery from the pioneering cardiologist in TX under good conditions. Travelling to TX from NJ was scary for them. So he had bloodless surgery in a rinky dink NJ hospital. The surgeon was on the brink of losing privileges b/c he had so many death. My gm loved to show her ardor for the Witnesses. She would refuse. How you view things depends on where in the spectrum you are observing. I felt as though there were no choices when I was growing up. Some Witnesses had an underground railroad to smuggle children out of the country to avoid court ordered transfusions.
.The Nuremberg trials addressed similar questions of individual liability. I don't know the finer points. how would an ethicist would frame the issue.? It seems too facile to blame only the Witnesses. Does anyone actually know what happens with Hospital Liaison Committees? I don't think it is fair for individuals to blame the GB. Imagine losing a loved one and later leaving the Witnesses.
Band- good observations. My years in the Org. were when Franz and Knorr ruled, so the heavy hammer was always in the air forcing people to obey or else. I saw first hand people die from lack of blood transfusions and many parents silently thanked a judge for giving power of attorney to the hospitals to save their babies.
I forgot to mention my pet interest, the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. If liability were imposed, you would have judges deciding whether a particular religious belief was correct or not. This would violate separation of church and state. Deciding which cases had merit would "excessively entangle" courts in a religion. It is not clear what entailed an Establishment in the Const'n. The record is not clear. Several colonies had their own established religions at the time the federal const'n was ratified. It is clear that Americans wanted no part of the British establishment. Americans braved a frontier and the Atlnatic Ocean to escape the British system.
Whatever courts do to one religion they might have the power to do to another.
I wonder if it would be different in foreign courts. You can't sue for damages from a bad marriage.
Yes, Rutherford/Knorr.
There is a case in Oregon where parents are being brought to criminal court for the deaths of their children because they relied on prayer and refused to seek medical treatments.
There is a case about to be tried in Utah that is interesting.
A man in a KH took a young girl out in service and instead took her away and raped her. He recorded his actions. She told her parents, they immediately called police, and he is in jail. But for some reason the elders in that hall got the tape, and to go through their procedure made the girl, and her parents, listen to, and recount step by step, what happened in the tape.
I guess so they could disfellowship him? I don't know. The parents are a few years later suing the men for essentially what the legal aspects are all about. "Intent to cause harm".....because how else could you actually interpret that right?
There should be no requirement to like the Bible. There are born agains on here, hijacking the forum, bashing the JWs for blood, but these naive persons don't read the Bible, because here JWs in having this horrific sacrifice of their children to show loyalty God are being increidbly loyal to the Bible, and so the Bible itself is the source of such horror - if we criticise JWs for following the Bible, we will only make idiots of ourselves. We would do better to criticise the blood issue for what it is; an out of date Bible teaching, yes, from an old book that has no place today in directing our lives than the ramblings of Shakespeare!
ekruks, while I don't believe the Bible is a perfect guidebook that we should follow 100%, there are several reasons why the Bible doesn't indicate that blood transfusions should be banned. I imagine that the 1st century Christians would probably have been open to taking transfusions if they had been as safe and widely available as they are today. Most or all of the reasons why the JW blood doctrine not a Biblical teaching are summed up here: http://www.jwfacts.com/watchtower/blood-transfusions.php
In this case, it is not the Bible at fault with the ban on blood transfusions, it is the strange and extreme interpretion of the Bible springing from the mind of a few men. Otherwise, there would be many groups with such an edict, but I am only aware of one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWNlyyM32ts&list=PLyNx0oM_bmgBuDVZWWiInBRGoovkUj95B&index=1
