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JENNIFER BUSH SEEMED A HEARTbreaking example of bad medical luck. The child had had various medical ills since infancy-tough, multisystem afflictions that tenaciously resisted treatment, crippling her digestive system and urinary tract. She seemed to have immune problems as well, for despite her normal white-blood-cell counts, she repeatedly festered with bacterial infections in her gut and bladder. By age nine, Jennifer had been hospitalized more than 200 times and had undergone forty operations, including the removal of her gallbladder, her appendix and part of her intestines. And still she did not improve. Her plight was a longstanding mystery-until it was solved, not by her doctors, but by the police.
To begin to understand what happened to Jennifer Bush, one must confront a vexing question: What things are OK to do to a child? The issue interests me, since it was part of the reason I lost religion back when I was an adolescent. My friends and I in Sunday school would marvel at the injustices of the Exodus story. What about the horses? we'd ask. Why should they have drowned in the Red Sea? What about the soldiers who got drowned? I bet a lot of them had no choice in the matter, either.
But the episode most likely to shake one's faith was obvious: What about the killing of the firstborn? How did they get mixed up in this fight? Our Sunday school teachers would dutifully explain that the situation was more complicated than we appreciated. Pharaoh was not just a man. He was also the god of the Egyptians, and the conflict was a kind of pro wrestling match between him and Yahweh, the god of the Israelites. Given the bragging rights at stake, no holds were barred. Animals, crops, servants, even babies were all extensions of Pharaoh, and thus fair game.
Few people still buy the Old Testament version of children as complete extensions of adults. These days, if Abraham threatened to slit his son Isaac's throat because of some issues he needed to work out with his god, the likely result would be a visit from the child-welfare authorities. Nevertheless, most people consider children to be partial extensions of adults, and rightly so. Children need their parents to make important decisions...