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BERNSTEIN: A moral minimum in Manhattan

Traditional religious practices should be treated as subsidiary to existing legal standards

I suspect most of us at the University undergo routine medical procedures without much thought. In my household, vaccines have always been an expectation. But in our secular society, there are times when medicinal practices and religious values conflict. These moments are rare and often extreme, but they present difficult questions.

In New York City there is a long-running controversy surrounding a religiously mandated practice in a small sect of ultra-Orthodox Jews. During the circumcision ritual, mohels (the men who perform the circumcisions) perform what’s called metzitzah b’peh (MBP), a practice in which they use their mouths to suction blood out of the infant’s wound. Aside from the cringe-worthy nature of this activity, it has had seriously damaging consequences: in a city where 75 percent of adults have oral herpes, these babies contract the disease easily. According to the Jewish Daily Forward, between 2000 and 2011, 11 New York infants contracted herpes from this practice, two of whom died and two of whom suffered brain damage. In 2014 alone there have been four reported cases of infant herpes due to this ritual.

This is not the only questionable medically-related religious practice we see in our country today, though it is certainly notable. Jehovah’s Witnesses, for example, refuse blood transfusions, as they are prohibited by their religion. While I personally contend that anyone should be able to make medical decisions for him- or herself (as long as such decisions will not be threatening to others’ health), the prevailing question is what to do if a Jehovah’s Witness’ child needs a blood transfusion — do we deem the child’s parent competent to make that medical decision?

New York City now requires mohels to give parents a consent form that explains the risk of their child contracting herpes (which many mohels refuse to do regardless). But this again ignores the broader question: at what point do we overrule parents’ decisions in favor of a child’s health?

This is exceedingly difficult to answer. There have been instances in which the federal government and states have prioritized secular rule over religious rule. When it comes to children, our history is messy. It is legal for parents, for example, to refuse vaccines for their children, though children may be required to get certain vaccines when entering school. It is illegal for parents, despite an extremist Mormon custom, to marry their children into polygamy, which would be unarguably damaging to their children mentally and physically. It is also illegal for parents to allow or perform female genital mutilation (FGM), though some schools of Islam consider it obligatory.

It is easy to support the current laws regarding the above three examples, because the former seems reasonable, and the latter two are such extreme scenarios that it is easy to deem them unacceptable. But where would blood transfusions and MBP fall? These practices may seem disagreeable, but they are not as extreme as something like FGM, and they are not necessarily life-threatening, depending on the circumstances. Where do we draw the line when it comes to these situations of medical care — meaning, at what point do we accuse these parents of negligence or child abuse? To me, risking the exposure of your child to herpes — sometimes a lethal disease for infants — is not a far cry from either accusation.

I understand it is all too easy for me to condemn these practices when I have no personal connection to any of them. It may seem arrogant to suggest my secular values should supplant someone’s religious ones. But the issue here is not what a religious individual chooses to do independently; it is how that person’s religion affects others. I would never suggest a parent should not raise his child in his faith. But if that faith includes physically dangerous behaviors, we must create limits to protect the health of the child. In many cases we have valued law above religion; in no situation is this more necessary than when it pertains to the safety of children.

The virtue of non-religious, democratically derived laws is that they create, to borrow a business ethics term, a moral minimum: while laws may appear to have their own arbitrariness, they create a standard of living and treatment among individuals who have myriad moral codes. Given a societal standard that we not harm the health and safety of others, the least chaotic way to adhere to such a standard is to treat religious practices that risk harming children — even if the religion dictates that these practices aid entry to Heaven — as subordinate to our existing legal standards. Otherwise, what prevents individuals from seeking justification for any dangerous activity by simply reinterpreting an existing religious text? Though determining what constitutes “harm” to a child may require subjectivity — especially since, for example, we permit parents to refuse vaccinations for their children — determining whether a practice is life-threatening can, at times, be simple. The staggering number of herpes contractions definitively makes, in my opinion, MBP life-threatening — though a functional policy could be to allow only mohels who test negative for herpes to practice this ritual. Likewise, perhaps doctors should be given license, in a life-or-death situation, to overrule a parent’s desires and give a child a blood transfusion. It seems reasonable to draw the line between religious values and what we permit in our country at activities that potentially endanger children.

Dani Bernstein is a Senior Associate Editor for The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at d.bernstein@cavalierdaily.com.

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