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Grex > Agora35 > #90: Fundamentalist detained for refusing prenatal care gives birth. | |
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mcnally
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Fundamentalist detained for refusing prenatal care gives birth.
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Oct 17 01:48 UTC 2000 |
from Salon.com, www.salon.com, posted without permission..
> Sect member gives birth to girl
>
> - - - - - - - - - - - -
> By JUSTIN POPE
>
> Oct. 16, 2000 | BOSTON (AP) -- A pregnant member of a
> fundamentalist sect who was ordered held in a medical
> facility to protect her fetus gave birth Monday to a
> girl who was immediately taken into state custody.
>
> Rebecca Corneau gave birth to a 7-pound, 15-ounce baby
> in the presence of several relatives and a midwife,
> prosecutor Gerry FitzGerald said.
>
> The state Department of Social Services immediately
> assumed custody of the girl, whose fate will be decided
> by the courts. Both mother and daughter were in good
> condition.
>
> "We are just going to make sure ... that she receives
> medical attention, and that her best interests are well
> cared for," agency spokeswoman Carol Yelverton said of
> the newborn.
>
> Corneau and her husband, David, are members of Christian
> sect in Attleboro that rejects conventional medicine.
> Investigators have spent more than a year looking into
> the disappearance of two children, including a newborn
> son of the Corneaus. Both children are believed to be
> dead and buried in Maine.
>
> David Corneau spent more than three months in jail for
> refusing to testify about the children's whereabouts. He
> was freed last month after invoking his constitutional
> right against self-incrimination.
>
> On Aug. 31, a judge ordered Corneau to be detained at a
> Boston facility for pregnant women in custody, after she
> refused to submit to a court-ordered physical examination.
>
> The prosecutor said Corneau is now free to leave when
> she feels able.
>
> John Rigo, an attorney who represented the unborn child in
> court hearings, did not immediately return calls for comment.
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| 32 responses total. |
mcnally
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response 1 of 32:
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Oct 17 01:50 UTC 2000 |
Just out of curiosity, is there anyone here who *doesn't* find
the sentence:
"A judge ordered Corneau to be detained at a Boston facility
for pregnant women in custody, after she refused to submit to
a court-ordered physical examination,"
extremely troubling?
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bdh3
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response 2 of 32:
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Oct 17 03:27 UTC 2000 |
But she has the right to an abortion.
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redcube
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response 3 of 32:
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Oct 17 04:11 UTC 2000 |
Wow that is horrible.
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bdh3
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response 4 of 32:
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Oct 17 05:57 UTC 2000 |
How is it horrible? I don't think she wanted an abortion, what she
wanted was to give birth without benefit of the state. And your
government regards this a wrong.
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tod
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response 5 of 32:
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Oct 17 09:51 UTC 2000 |
Society has rules. One of them involves disappearing acts.
Why is this such a shocker if their own son is MIA?
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brighn
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response 6 of 32:
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Oct 17 14:55 UTC 2000 |
Innocent until proven guilty...?
Until Jonbenet's parents and OJ are in jail, "mysterious circumstances" won't
be justification for imprisonment and stripping of civil rights.
Besides, I don't see how the issues are related. If the children died AFTER
birth, then watch the family AFTER birth, but don't detain the mother for
refusing pre-natal care unless there's clear evidence of pre-natal abuse.
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ashke
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response 7 of 32:
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Oct 17 15:35 UTC 2000 |
This brings up another point (from my years as a Law and Order addict), we
do not have the right to presecute on the basis of religion. However, if
someone refuses medical care for someone else, is that under the basis for
religious preferences, or is there also a right to have children cared for?
If you are going to go in and arrest parents who spank for abusing the child,
isn't refusing medical care later even worse? I'm not talking about pre-natal
care, which is pretty sketchy because there are teenage girls having kids but
never seeing a doctor, but at what point does well being over come this? I
think it's BS that you'd refuse a blood transfusion, or medical attention,
or anything so sofisticated as asprin to take care of yourself. But that's
me. Parents who refuse care for their children, in womb and out of, are they
bound by a different set of laws that prevent them from being responsible?
If you live with a diabetic who goes into insulin shock, and don't call an
ambulance, does that also constitute neglect on your part? What if they are
your child, but you don't like medical intervention. It's such a sticky way
to go.
(ps. in that episode of Law and Order, the parent's who's daughter died
because of lack of medical attention, were sent to jail because they had tried
to call an ambulance before someone else in their "church" stopped them.
Therefore because they tried, their claims of religious reasons were moot.)
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brighn
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response 8 of 32:
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Oct 17 16:18 UTC 2000 |
I'd say that society has a right to intervene when parents are behaving in
a clearly abusive or neglectful way, such as failing to provide emergency
healthcare intervention. #0 certainly doesn't indicate the need for
emergency healthcare intervention, since (as you say) many women carry healthy
children to term without prenatal check-ups.
Of course, all of my comments are based on the assumption that #0 provides
a reasonably complete and unbiased depiction of the case, which it most
probably doesn't.
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ashke
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response 9 of 32:
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Oct 17 17:00 UTC 2000 |
And I agree about 0. Remember all your Regency Romances, ladies, and they
didn't hardly SEE doctors, and they smoked and drank too! GASP! I don't kno
where to draw the line, but there has to be one, either on a case to case
basis, or some kind of standard. And I see problems with both.
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brighn
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response 10 of 32:
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Oct 17 18:02 UTC 2000 |
The problem is, any standard which relies on medical opinions about abuse make
two assumptions:
(1) The entire recognized medical community is in concord on what constitutes
pre-natal (or child) abuse. It isn't.
(2) The medical community is right.
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flem
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response 11 of 32:
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Oct 17 18:41 UTC 2000 |
Most of our societal code regards children as, essentially, particularly
obnoxious property. Hence, I think she should have been allowed to kill her
children all she wanted.
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senna
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response 12 of 32:
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Oct 18 03:42 UTC 2000 |
I'm uncomfortable with the idea of forcing medical care on people who don't
want it (or whose guardians don't want it.)
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keesan
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response 13 of 32:
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Oct 18 16:31 UTC 2000 |
Is it abuse when a mother is prevented from breast-feeding a baby?
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brighn
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response 14 of 32:
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Oct 18 16:52 UTC 2000 |
Depends on the size of the mother's tits, I suppose. ;}
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flem
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response 15 of 32:
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Oct 18 17:29 UTC 2000 |
I was hoping someone would say that, so I wouldn't have to. :)
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mary
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response 16 of 32:
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Oct 18 17:36 UTC 2000 |
Re: #13 Not in some situations.
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brighn
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response 17 of 32:
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Oct 18 17:38 UTC 2000 |
Glad to accommodate, Greg =}
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ashke
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response 18 of 32:
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Oct 18 19:29 UTC 2000 |
Oh lord! <groans>
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janc
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response 19 of 32:
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Oct 19 03:12 UTC 2000 |
Um, these parents apparantly misplaced their previous child. It's
missing, presumed dead, and they won't say where it went. I'd say the
state has at least some cause to doubt their ability to take suitable
care of a child, born or unborn.
There isn't enough information here to judge the case by. I don't know
if this was a good idea or not. I do know that there are parents who
cannot be trusted to care properly for their children, and I believe
that in such cases the state danged well does have a duty to intervene.
But those judgements are very complex, and can't be made on the basis of
a few paragraphs by an unknown author.
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russ
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response 20 of 32:
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Oct 19 04:23 UTC 2000 |
Re #14: So what if the mother was Dolly Parton?
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aaron
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response 21 of 32:
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Oct 19 14:22 UTC 2000 |
This wasn't a criminal trial - it was a child protective action. The state
no doubt presented a prima facie case that parents who "lose" a child and
can't account for his whereabouts are probably hiding facts that would
reflect negatively on their parenting skills. The article suggests that the
parents did nothing to refute that case. In most states, child protective
actions are heard with significantly loosened rules of evidence - allowing
a lot of evidence to be entered through hearsay. Michigan is one of the
few states which allows a parent to demand a jury trial before a court can
assert permanent jurisdiction over a child (as opposed to temporary,
emergency jurisdiction) - most leave that decision entirely up to a judge.
And as a matter of routine, these judges see horrible things during their
workday. Given that most parents consent to the court's taking jurisdiction,
without any real understanding of what that means, and most of the others
can't afford to put up a serious fight, it is rarely difficult for the state
to assert jurisdiction over somebody's minor children. Including, in this
case, an unborn child.
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brighn
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response 22 of 32:
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Oct 19 14:38 UTC 2000 |
Have they looked between the couch cushions? I lose the TV remote there a lot.
I would tend to agree that "losing" a child makes things suspicious. OTOH,
it's rather difficult to "lose" a fetus. So leave the mother be while she's
preggers and watch the parents like a hawk after birth.
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aaron
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response 23 of 32:
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Oct 19 15:00 UTC 2000 |
You think she's going to show up at a hospital to give birth?
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bdh3
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response 24 of 32:
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Oct 21 04:01 UTC 2000 |
Perhaps the parents simply refuse to have anything to do with 'ceasar'
(contrary I might add to conventional x-tian theology) and know full
well where they gave their kid who died of natural causes (or who was
killed by indians) an x-tian burial. Is there a difference between the
state holding a mother in custody to monitor birth and the PRC holding a
mother in custody to throw the baby into a well (as apparently recently
happened) or 'crown' the kid and inject formalin into the brain (which
also apparently has happened)? (Be careful, a state might outlaw
abortions...)
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