- Twitchell Case
The Twitchell Case was the most prominent of a series of criminal cases in the late 1980s and early 1990s in which parents who were members of the Christian Science Church were prosecuted for the deaths of children whose medical conditions had been treated only by Christian Science treatment.
In 1988,
Massachusetts prosecutors charged David and Ginger Twitchell withmanslaughter in the 1986 death of their two-year-old son Robyn.Robyn Twitchell died of a
peritonitis caused by a bowel obstruction that medical professionals declared would have been easily correctable.The Twitchells' defense contended that the couple were within their First Amendment rights to treat their son's illness with prayer and that Massachusetts had recognized this right in an exemption to the statute outlawing
child neglect . The Twitchells were convicted ofinvoluntary manslaughter . They were sentenced to ten years probation and required to bring their remaining children to regular visits to a pediatrician. [ [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE0D61030F935A3575BC0A966958260] New York Times, 6 August 1990, In Child Deaths, a Test for Christian Science] [ [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,970633-1,00.html] TIME, 16 July 1990, Convicted Of Relying on Prayer] The conviction was overturned in 1993. [ [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed&uid=12041213&cmd=showdetailview&indexed=google] NCBI Pubmed, PMID: 12041213 ]The Twitchell case, and others like it, have become rallying points for both people who criticize religious exemptions to child neglect laws, [ [http://www.masskids.org/dbre/dbre_6.html] Masskids.org, Death By Religious Exemption] and those who believe that the government oversteps its bounds when it prosecutes people who believe that prayer is a legitimate alternative to medical treatment.citation
url = http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9400E0DC1539F933A25751C0A960958260
year = 1996
date =February 10 1996
issn = 1656023
title = No, Prayer Doesn't Always Cure. But Neither Does Medicine.
periodical =The New York Times
page = 22
accessdate = 2008-04-23]References
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