Vegan Fundamentalist Parents Let Baby Die To Please God

As you are no doubt aware, it is the official position of this mommyblog that vegans are the worst. Vegetarians, you can cook for, but vegans have to bring their own Tupperware container of organic sludge to the Wonkette Holiday party. And as Yr Editrix says, "Even more annoying than when vegans try to come to your house for dinner though is when vegans don’t take their dehydrated babies to the hospital," and even worse than that is when vegans also don't do medical care at all because they are Seventh Day Adventist extremists who won't even take their baby to the hospital until he is almost dead, and then it's too late to save him. So here's a story to worry Libertarians everywhere:

A couple in Calgary, Canada are facing charges after their 14-month old son died from a treatable infection in November, 2013. Prosecutors say that the child’s death was preventable and that has body had been severely weakened by the family’s strict, vegan diet.

 According to CTV News Calgary, at the time of his death, toddler John Clark had never seen a doctor in his life nor received any form of pre- or post-natal care. The boy was born at home and perished of a staph infection two months after his only birthday.

Parents Jeromie Clark, 31, and Jennifer Clark, 34, are Seventh Day Adventists who practiced a strict vegan diet and shunned traditional medical interventions in favor of prayer.

Looks like Canada's socialist nanny state government is persecuting people of faith simply for exercising their God-given rights to raise, starve, and neglect the health of their children in accord with the dictates of their conscience and their God. Child Protective Services has also taken the Clarks' two surviving children from the home. The Clarks have been charged with "Criminal negligence causing death" and "Failure to provide the necessaries of life," the latter of which we aren't even sure is a crime in the liberty-loving United States.

John Clark's infection "would have been easily treatable with antibiotics" if his parents had given him medical attention instead of hoping that they had chosen the correct variant of several tens of thousands of Christian sects. Discovery News notes that, in addition to the whole Sabbath-on-Saturday thing, the Seventh-Day Adventist church

is known for promoting a healthy lifestyle among its members, including not smoking, avoiding “unclean” food products mentioned in Leviticus (such as pork) and vegetarianism. The church does not officially endorse veganism, though according to an article in the Calgary Sun, “more than 60 percent of Adventists are vegetarian.”

The piece didn't further break that down into any statistics on how many are vegans, which seems like a journalistic oversight, although it did cite a  New York Times article saying that a vegan diet "is dangerous for weaned babies and toddlers, who need plenty of protein and calcium" and that soy is a lousy alternative for babies, since it "actually inhibits growth and reduces absorption of protein and minerals." An Adventist webpage on "Living a Healthy Life" simply says,

A well-balanced vegetarian diet that avoids the consumption of meat coupled with intake of legumes, whole grains, nuts, fruits and vegetables, along with a source of vitamin B12, will promote vigorous health.

Again, no mention of veganism there.

We'll admit that we weren't under the impression that Adventists reject all medical treatment in favor of faith healing alone; if so, that would seem to undercut the necessity of their having a medical school at the Seventh Day Adventist Loma Linda University.

It would appear that the Clarks got some special revelations directly from God, telling them to go ahead and adopt a faith-healing-only approach to letting their children die, since Randy Barber, the pastor of the Seventh Day Adventist church they formerly attended in Calgary, said that they had left the congregation quite some time ago:

"He became very radical, very controlling with his wife," recollects Pastor Barber. "They disappeared and we haven't seen them for about eight years."

This past fall, Pastor Barber says Jeromie and Jennifer, a school teacher, attended a single service. The pastor remembers Jeromie Clark seemed very serious.

"He's quite thin and always has a very stern look on his face," said Pastor Barber. "I've never seen him smile."

It is a comfort to know, at least, that child neglect for God appears in this case to be more of a deeply held personal religious belief than an official doctrine.

In other news, Americans continue to freak out over the threat of radical Islam.

[ CTV News & Discovery News via RawStory ]