Wonder: A JW mother or father with minor children should not be allowed to refuse a necessary and available treatment on grounds of public interest. They should be urged by court decision to performed their parental care until the children are 18 and independent.
Anyone who chooses to refuse a life saving procedure in the face of leaving a newborn child behind should be declared mentally incompetent.
Any other kind of phobia - and in the case of the JWs...blood refusal is more of a phobia than anything else - would be treated as a mental disorder and the patient declared not of sound mind.
StarTrekAngel: They should have been in our last assembly where a drama representing a brother consulting elders on this very topic was shown. The elder said "Before I can say yes (to the medical treatment in question), I need to know the details..." (perfect example of elders making medical decisions for a third person)
It is not right that untrained elders put themselves in the position of giving medical advice to pregnant women. Ugh...imagine being a young JW woman and having to discuss your pregnancy with either some old, uneducated elder or some snot nosed 18 year old JW male who just got appointed over you. To have to sit down with them and discuss what your care plans are going to be. About procedures and treatment they know very little about.
Eloise's coercion happened long before she was ever admitted to the hospital. It started here (and even before that with promises of paradise and threats of Armageddon in the children's book):
https://www.jw.org/en/bible-teachings/family/teenagers/bible-teach-study-guides/godly-view-life-blood-part-2/
And it continued here:
This is the package that the elders recently received on how to deal with pregnant JW women. Note that this care plan has been 'simplified".
- September 3, 2016 TO ALL BODIES OF ELDERS RE: Care Plan Simplification
- Outline for Discussion of Care Plan with Publisher HID-CP-OTLN
- Care Plan for Women in Labour Refusing Blood Transfusion HID-CP-GH Jan 2011
- Instructions for use of Care Plan HID-CP-INSTR
- Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies; Awake article reprint g0911A-E_Healthy_Mothers_Healthy_Babies
Also note that these forms do not address any of the risks involved in choosing alternative procedures. Nowhere is a JW woman told of how her blood refusal puts her in one of the highest categories of risk for maternal death or that the recommended/approved procedures are off label use.
*thanks to wifibandit for those links