Tampa, Florida, Sep 12, 2019 / 05:20 pm (CNA).- A judge in Florida has denied a couple custody of their four-year-old son, who has leukemia, because there is “imminent risk of neglect” if he stays with his parents, who skipped a chemotherapy session for the child in order to leave the state to seek alternative treatments.
A judge ruled Sept. 9 that the Tampa Bay-area parents, Joshua McAdams and Taylor Bland-Ball, will be required to undergo a psychological evaluation with a parenting index after which point they may be able to be reunified with their son Noah, who is currently with his grandparents, the Tampa Bay Times reports.
Kevin Miller, assistant professor of theology at Franciscan University of Steubenville, stressed that the Catholic Church takes parental rights very seriously, but these rights should not be misused.
“When it is not fairly clear that parental rights are being abused, it seems to me, the state should generally be deferential to parents,” Miller told CNA.
But this case, he said, raises serious questions about whether the parents are misusing their authority and rights.
Florida law allows the state to provide medical treatment to children even if the parents object, CBS News reports.
“There was no alternative with a remote chance of success…They were choosing between life and death for their child,” Judge Palermo said as quoted by Fox13.
If the parents do not comply with the evaluation, the out-of-home placement could become permanent. They have 30 days to appeal the judge’s decision, the Times reports.
Doctors at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg diagnosed Noah with acute lymphoblastic leukemia in April 2019.
After two rounds of treatment, on April 22, 2019, the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office issued a Missing Endangered Child alert after the parents did not show up for Noah’s third treatment, stating that “the parents failed to bring in the child to a medically necessary hospital procedure.”
McAdams, Bland-Ball, and Noah were located in Kentucky a week later; they had fled to Ohio to seek alternative treatments. Authorities placed Noah in the custody of his maternal grandparents in early May 2019.
The child’s mother argues that rather than denying him lifesaving treatment, she and her husband were simply seeking a second opinion, believing that chemotherapy had harmful side effects. On a GoFundMe page, Bland-Ball says that they were unhappy with the treatment they received at the hospital in St. Petersburg, and also that Noah’s condition has not improved.
Bland-Ball had sought to use “rosemary, Vitamin B Complex, including B17, completely alkaline diet, Rosemary, a liver/kidney/gallbladder/blood herbal extract, daily colloidal silver, high dose vitamin c, collagen, Reishi mushroom tea and grapefruit peel and breastmilk” as alternative treatments for Noah’s leukemia.
She has also posted on Facebook seeking cannabis treatments for Noah, and her attorney has confirmed that Noah also has received CBD and THC oil treatments. Medical marijuana is legal in Florida.
Bland-Ball also moved Noah’s PICC line, which she had no formal training on how to do other than watching instructional YouTube videos, the judge said.
Among the reasons the judge cited for his decision were evidence the parents dumped a car and cell phones while fleeing Florida, and the judge stated that he was convinced that the parents would flee Florida again if given the chance.
The judge also cited McAdams’ “proclivity for aggression” towards family members. McAdams in August 2016 was arrested on a charge of misdemeanor domestic battery by Brooksville police, the Tampa Bay Times reported.
McAdams reportedly threw a plastic toy bucket at Bland-Ball but accidentally hit Noah, cutting his face. McAdams then shoved Bland-Ball into a wall “multiple times,” causing a head contusion, the Times reported.
He spent three days in jail, records show, and the case was dropped in March 2017; McAdams later attended counseling. The Times reports that Bland-Ball also filed for a protective injunction against McAdams, according to court records, but it was later dismissed.
‘Appropriate social measures’
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, “In creating man and woman, God instituted the human family and endowed it with its fundamental constitution. Its members are persons equal in dignity. For the common good of its members and of society, the family necessarily has manifold responsibilities, rights, and duties.”
According to Miller, those rights include the right of parents to make decisions about how to promote the welfare— physical, psychological, intellectual, spiritual— of their children.
He also emphasized that “the family is a community of love in a way that no other community is capable of being,” and thus respect for family rights serves the good of both family members and of society more broadly.
The Catechism also teaches: “The family must be helped and defended by appropriate social measures. Where families cannot fulfill their responsibilities, other social bodies have the duty of helping them and of supporting the institution of the family. Following the principle of subsidiarity, larger communities should take care not to usurp the family’s prerogatives or interfere in its life.”
But, Miller told CNA, some actions that parents might claim to be exercises of parental rights might actually be abuses of those rights. In case of gross abuses, he said, putting children in serious danger, it can be appropriate for the state, as part of its natural purpose of looking after the common good of its members, to step in and stop those abuses; this is obviously the case when, for example, parents subject their children to certain kinds of violence.
Parents overruled
Of course, Miller said, it is possible for the state to overstep its authority.
International cases such as that of 11-month-old Charlie Gard in 2017 and toddler Alfie Evans last year have highlighted situations of the state determining treatment for a patient against the parent’s wishes. In both cases, which took place in the UK, the state determined that the patients be removed from life support, despite the protest of the parents.
These cases are different from the Florida case, Miller said, because in both UK cases, the state was choosing death for the children in question, and in the Florida case, the state is prioritizing a treatment aimed at saving child’s life.
“I think one clear difference is that in those [UK] cases, it was the state that— I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say— wanted them to die,” Miller commented.
He noted that in the Gard case, the parents attempted to transfer to transfer the child to the United States to undergo an experimental treatment for his condition.
“In the one case, it was experimental treatment, but it was experimental treatment offered as part of a bone fide study by a bone fide doctor at a bone fide hospital here in the US. So in that case they were pursuing an approach that you could certainly call extraordinary rather than ordinary means of treatment, but there’s nothing wrong with that. I think it’s within the rights of the parents to decide whether to pursue that kind of a treatment or not.”
He noted that in both of the UK cases, the question was not whether or not to pursue an alternate form of treatment, but rather whether or not to continue basic life-saving measures.
Miller said the only similarity he sees between the UK cases and the Florida case is the fact that the state overruled the wishes of the parents.
“This [Florida] case, in multiple respects, is almost like the opposite of what was going on in the Charlie Gard and Alfie Evans cases,” Miller said.
“In terms of what the parents are trying to do, and in terms of what the state is trying to do…there’s absolutely no inconsistency in siding with what the state is doing in this present case and siding with the parents in those earlier cases.”
‘An abuse of parental rights’
“I suspect that the parents are genuinely sincere in claiming that what they want to do is in their son’s best interest – although the fact that the father, on one occasion, attempted an act of violence against the mother that ended up injuring their son is cause for concern,” Miller said.
“Nevertheless – and putting aside that point about the father’s history – it seems to me that what they want to do constitutes an abuse of parental rights.”
According to Fox13, the judge said the particular type of chemotherapy being given to Noah has a 70-year track record with 90-95% success rate.
“Proper treatment, based on evidence established by a tremendous amount of research, is, sadly, very difficult for the child, his parents, and other family members. It takes several years. There are side effects, including serious ones, during this period. There is the possibility of other side effects appearing years later. The fact remains that in the vast majority of cases, treatment is lifesaving, and so confers benefits that far outweigh the burdens,” Miller noted.
“In contrast, there is absolutely no evidence to support the parents’ view that stopping standard treatment very early, and switching to the approach that they favor, will confer any benefit. Rather, it is certain that – barring a miracle – the child will come out of remission and die of leukemia.”
Miller also pointed out a fact that has been circulated in news reports about the case: that at least one of the alternative treatments that Bland-Ball mentions, known commonly as Vitamin B17, has been found by the National Center for Biomedical Information to not only be likely ineffective for curing cancer, but also bringing with it the potential for cyanide poisoning.
“Again: We ought to be vigilant about the problem of abuse of state authority. This does happen – including in the area of health-care decision making. The phenomenon of ‘medical kidnapping’ is not purely fictitious,” Miller cautioned.
“But in the case at hand, it is clear to me that it is the parents – not the state – who are abusing their rights.”
‘Measure of last resort’
Father Tad Pacholczyk, director of education at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, told CNA that removal of a child from parental custody ought to be a measure of “last resort,” to be used only after a “shared understanding” between the parents and healthcare professionals cannot be achieved.
“Sometimes parents may be attracted to ‘alternative’ treatments they came across on the internet that have not [been] tested or verified, and it may be important to spend a great deal of time and energy explaining to such parents the clear preferability of using standard treatments that have been tested and verified as efficacious for many patients,” Pacholczyk said.
Pacholczyk said parents should generally be permitted to make medical judgements on behalf of minor children, especially when weighing the burdens of particular treatments such as chemotherapy— or, as in the Charlie Gard case, whether to discontinue treatment altogether.
“The decision to discontinue such interventions ultimately lies with the patient — or in this case with the parents as the child’s proxy,” he said.
In making such judgements, he noted, parents need to be in close communication with healthcare professionals, and avail themselves of their medical expertise, prior to reaching any conclusions regarding the proposed treatment.
“In situations where there is a standard treatment available, one that works in a high percentage of cases…it may indeed be unreasonable, and even wrong, for parents to decline such a treatment if the burdens to their child associated with its use are fairly low,” he said.
“In such cases, however, the first line of attack should be not to take away the custody of their child, but to work assiduously to convince the parents to use the most effective approach.”
Echoing Miller, Pacholczyk said that the family is, broadly speaking, the best place for a child, and “custody should be taken away only in clear situations of manifest danger to the child or in other evident situations of abuse or gross neglect.”
Judge Palermo in the Florida case emphasized that in his view, the state had “met its burden and found clear and convincing evidence for neglect.”
“Being raised through substitute arrangements set up by the state is many times more detrimental to the well-being of children than remaining within their native family setting,” he said.
“State and governmental agencies are almost invariably worse at caring for the needs of children than the child’s own parents, even when those parents may not exercise perfect judgment or may lack ideal parenting skills.”
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Archbishop Broglio: Please don’t tell us Catholics what’s key to Catholic support. Stay in your own lane. You don’t get to speak for Catholics in the arena of politics. Morals, yes, but not politics.
An intricate path to follow, both proclaiming faith and morals and without the Church having solutions which in the secular realm are so often matters of prudential judgment. Two sources on moral evil and moral absolutes:
VATICAN II: “Furthermore, whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia, or willful self-destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraced working conditions, where men are treated as mere tools for profit, rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others of their like are infamies indeed. They poison human society, but they do more harm to those who practice them than those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are a supreme dishonor to the Creator” (Gauadium et Spes, n. 27).
The CATECHISM: The Catechism and the Magisterium (nn. 2033-5) identify intrinsically evil acts which are immoral under all circumstances and non-negotiable. These include: intentional killing of the innocent (n. 2273), infanticide (n. 2268), abortion (n. 2273), euthanasia (n. 2277); and sexual immorality (nn. 2352, 2353, 2356, 2357, 2370, 2380, 2381).
The SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL: “Furthermore, whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia, or willful self-destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraced working conditions, where men are treated as mere tools for profit, rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others of their like are infamies indeed. They poison human society, but they do more harm to those who practice them than those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are a supreme dishonor to the Creator” (n. 27).
ONE POSSIBLE READING of Archbishop Broglio’s comments is that while he does identify moral issues (and possible voter influences), as you would have it, he also is at least careful to not presume concrete solutions, as also you seem to have it. For example, what might a functional and bipartisan immigration policy under rule of law actually look like? And, surely, there are approaches other than the statist federal budgets and the crushing national debt for ameliorating systemic problems in “the economy.” The Catholic Social Teaching upholds solidarity and subsidiarity, both.
But we can agree, the lane striping is a bit worn.
Archbishop Broglio, recognizes that respect for the Sanctity of the marital act within The Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, and respect for the Sanctity of all human life from the moment of conception to natural death, are human rights issues, not political issues. Christ’s teaching on the inherent Dignity of the human person as a beloved son or daughter, from the moment of conception, is grounded in the Truth about the essence of the human person, who is Willed by God, The Ordered Communion Of Perfect Love, The Most Holy And Undivided Blessed Trinity, worthy of Redemption.
At the heart of Liberty Is Christ, “4For it is impossible for those who were once illuminated, have tasted also the heavenly gift and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, 5Have moreover tasted the good word of God and the powers of the world to come…”, to not believe that Christ’s Sacrifice On The Cross will lead us to Salvation, but we must desire forgiveness for our sins, and accept Salvational Love, God’s Gift Of Grace And Mercy; believe in The Power And The Glory Of Salvation Love, and rejoice in the fact that No Greater Love Is There Than This, To Desire Salvation For One’s Beloved. “Hail The Cross, Our Only Hope.”
“Blessed are they who are Called to The Marriage Supper Of The Lamb.”
“For where your treasure is there will your heart be also.”
Thank you, Archbishop Broglio for serving Our Lord, Jesus The Christ, and in serving Christ, serving the Good of all human persons 🙏💕🌹
Oh, please, Tom. The man is simply speculating about why Catholics voted a certain way.
What’s astonishing to me is that something like 44 percent of Catholics continued to vote for the death cult that is the Democratic Party.
What, one third of America’s children for the past half century murdered by dismemberment, by having their skin seared off, their brain stems punctured — those aren’t enough for you Democratic Catholics?
You want to see *all* of the babies butchered?
So, Tom, don’t criticize the clerics who speak out and defend our children from the death cult that is the Democratic Party.
Better that you criticize — and roundly — the ones who say nothing.
Our challenge as a Church is to seize the golden opportunity to revitalize Catholicism since this, the first time in recent history, a majority of Catholics voted in favor of the lesser evil, and at least the prospect of reshaping the moral consciousness of Catholics on abortion as well as disordered sexuality. Men impersonating women invading women’s locker rooms and bathrooms, playing fields. With knowledge that the Trump administration is likely to curtain these culturally destructing trends Catholics, as well as the Nation as a whole have essentially called for a halt in their vote.
Insofar as moral absolutes the definitive assessment of what complies in existential scenarios is a complex one. Although continued and unwavering pronunciation by prelates can have significant outcomes. Part of our challenge is the appointment by Pope Francis of US cardinals Tobin, McElroy, Cupich et Al who will weaken a universal clergy response. Perhaps our real hope lies in a new pontiff, a surprise traditional cardinal similar [analogically] to our political election.
John 12:5-6 – “Why wasn’t this perfume sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” Judas did not say this because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief. As keeper of the money bag, he used to take from what was put into it.
Francis has used Peter’s Pence to pay for administrative expense. The USCCB states the purpose of Peter’s Pence: “emergency assistance to those who are suffering as a result of war, oppression, natural disaster, and disease.” Such undermining of Church teaching and such double speak makes skeptics of many. Then we wonder why the typical American Catholic majority does NOT respect the dignity of human life in the womb and does NOT believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist.
What evidentiary support can Abp. Broglio offer to suggest that 56% of American Catholics voted for Trump because of his pro-life position?
We may question Pew’s research results and methodology; nevertheless, Pew reports that in 2019, 56% of all American Catholics believed abortion should be legal in all or most cases. http://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/10/20/8-key-findings-about-catholics-and-abortion. In 2022, the percentage remained the same.
http://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/05/23/like-americans-overall-catholics-vary-in-their-abortion-views-with-regular-mass-attenders-most-opposed/