User:SlimVirgin/RSbio

Rita Swan is the co-founder, with her husband, Douglas, of Children's Healthcare is a Legal Duty (CHILD), an American lobby group set up in 1983 to campaign against religion-exemptions from child abuse and neglect laws.

A former Christian Scientist, Swan has campaigned against religious exemptions and faith healing since the death of her two-year-old son, Matthew, from bacterial meningitis in 1977. Christian Scientists argue that there is no such thing as illness, and that apparent instances of it should be corrected by prayer rather than treated by medicine. Swan and her husband were persuaded by Christian Science practitioners not to seek medical care for Matthew; by the time they did, the infection had spread and he could not be saved.

The Swans responded by leaving the Christian Science church and setting up CHILD. They also brought a wrongful death suit against the church, but it was dismissed on First Amendment grounds, a decision upheld on appeal. The Christian Science church has been the most active religion in the United States in lobbying for the introduction of religious-exemptions to child-abuse laws.

Selected works

 * The Last Strawberry, Hag’s Head Press, 2010.
 * "Religion and Child Neglect," in C. Jenny, ed., Child Abuse and Neglect: Diagnosis, Treatment and Evidence, Saunders, 2010.
 * "Does one bizarre health care policy merit another?," Cedar Rapids Gazette, 19 October 2009.
 * "Medical neglect related to religion and culture," in Nicky Ali Jackson, ed., Encyclopedia of Domestic Violence, Routledge, 2007, pp. 475–483.
 * "Corporal Punishment, Religious Attitudes Toward," in Nicky Ali Jackson, ed., Encyclopedia of Domestic Violence, Routledge, 2007, pp. 205–208.
 * "Letting Children Die for the Faith", Free Inquiry, 1999, 19(1), pp. 6–7.
 * "On statutes depriving a class of children of rights to medical care: Can this discrimination be litigated?," Quinnipiac Health Law Journal, 1998. 2(1), pp. 73–95.
 * with S. M. Asser, "Child fatalities from religion-motivated medical neglect", Pediatrics, 101(4), April 1998, pp. 625–629.
 * "Children, medicine, religion, and the law," Advances in Pediatrics, 1997, 44, pp. 491–543.
 * "First Amendment does not give the right to injure children," Los Angeles Times, 14 July 1990.
 * "Fragile life: Religious beliefs that kill children," Kentucky Hospitals, Winter 1989, pp. 8–12.
 * "The Law Should Protect All Children", Journal of Christian Nursing, 4(2), Spring 1987, p. 40.
 * "Christian Science, faith healing, and the law," Free Inquiry, 4, Spring 1984, pp. 4–9.
 * "Faith healing, Christian Science, and the medical care of children," New England Journal of Medicine, 309(26), 29 December 1983, pp. 1639–1641.