Subtopic 1 - Moral Concerns/Value of the Beliefs

Although it is perhaps the least tangible of the arguments, the moral concerns associated with the issue are certainly the most compelling and inflammatory areas of discussion. Regardless of the legal parameters of any given situation, an observer or participant must ask themselves whether they can accept the death of a child when they could have been saved.

Death weighs heavily on everyone, and certainly no less so when it was a child who died. Who, then, could look directly at a dying kid and tell them that there is medicine that could save them, but God has said that using it would send them to Hell when they die? Even if someone were to believe that fetid pile of Biblical garbage, that doesn't mean a child should be allowed to die because of it. A belief system that supports the needless death of a child is no belief system at all; it is an excuse for murder. Anyone with a conscience can see that when a child dies due to something that could have been prevented, it is society's responsibility to cry out at the injustice.

The religious extremists who condone this behavior say that even though a child's death is tragic, it would be morally wrong for them to support an action that would, to their minds, send their child to Hell. But to the rest of us - so trapped on this mortal coil - it is a humanitarian offense when a child dies to go to some mythical afterlife, instead of living what could be a long and healthy life, which would only possibly end in the cruelly foretold Hellfire and eternal damnation.

So what the morality of the issue really comes down to is whether children should die because they might go to Heaven (the existence of which is disputed), or live because they might go to the equally-disputed Hell after living a long, happy life.