This article in USA Today points out a case where a toddler in a day care walked outside without being noticed and eventually drowned in a pool. The pool in question was labeled a “baptismal pool” and the USA Today headline wrongly reads:
Parents of infant file claim in baptismal drowning
Reading the article clearly shows that this was not a baptismal drowning (whatever that is) but a drowning in a pool labeled a baptismal pool based on negligence of the day care provider in a number of areas:
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The pool was not fenced, like every pool should be, particularly one accessible to small children.
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The day care allowed a small child to wander away. This child wandered into a pool. Another could have wondered into a busy street. Or “just” away. That should not be possible in a day care.
The article also discusses separation of church and state, in a context where a state cannot regulate a day care that is part of a faith-based organization. However, when something goes wrong, we certainly want to go after the state for somehow having failed at shutting this day care facility down.
We cannot – as we have found – force religious organizations to provide birth control funding to subscribers of their insurance plans.
We cannot – as we are finding out here – force day cares of faith-based organizations to install fences around their pools.
We can, however, then sue the state when the children we are entrusting to those organizations get injured or killed due to the negligence – not of the state – but the faith-based organization.
Do we want to have government exert some regulatory control over religious organizations, or do we not?