http://www.pulse24.com/News/Top_Story/20050624-021/page.asp
Bethany Hughes had a choice to make and it cost her her life.
The 17-year-old Alberta resident was a devout Jehovah’s Witness who was diagnosed with leukemia. And because of the tenets of her faith, she refused to accept blood transfusions.
When she died seven months later, her grieving father made it his personal mission to alert followers to the danger he believes the faith represents.
That was three years ago. Lawrence Hughes is still at it, and brought his bitter battle to Toronto on Friday.
“Every day Jehovah's Witnesses are dying because they refuse blood transfusions, including children,” a still angry Hughes condemns.
Bethany's refusal to take the treatments that could save her were ordered restored by a Calgary court. But it was too late.
Toronto residents will remember a similar case from last month, when a young B.C. girl fled to Toronto hoping to get non-invasive treatment in the U.S.
She was eventually ordered back west where the blood work was done over her family’s objections.
It’s cases like that and Lawrence’s own experience that’s led him to sue the religion's Watchtower Society for the role he believes they played in his child's demise.
“They are taking away people's rights and freedoms and using institutional coercion and brain-washing and intimidation to control their members,” he charges.
But Jehovah’s Witnesses insist their members understand the risks they’re taking and have the right to choose what or if they put anything into their bodies.
“Christians are told to abstain from blood,” counters spokesman Clive Thomas. “We don't believe in a burning hell fire but we believe that somebody who has broken God's laws unrepentantly will meet God's unfavourable judgment. And that means they may not get to live in a paradise on earth.”
But Hughes, who left the faith after his daughter’s death, doesn’t buy it anymore. He’s not sure if Bethany succumbed because the transfusions stopped or if the church prevented her from getting treated early on in her disease.
Either way, he knows she's gone and he doesn't want any other family to experience the same loss.
And his cause has a new urgency – he has a 16-year-old daughter who remains a Jehovah’s Witness and is currently living with her mother.
He’s afraid she’ll one day be forced to make what he considers a life threatening choice about her own body and is demanding governments be given the right to limit the powers of religious groups.
“I have two daughters,” he concludes. “And I don't want them to die because of this religion.”
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June 24, 2005
