First, children CANNOT make informed decisions, so they are not “voluntary” patients either way, and must be protected to the best of our ability by society, and not just their parents. That’s why car seats & vaccines, for example, are generally mandatory.

Second, misjudgments by doctors happen all the time, sometimes even leading to death. Your comparing that to parents who choose not to bring their sick kid to the hospital is completely off track. Doctors & hospitals do what they can to save someone, and it doesn’t always work. This doesn’t mean you stick them in jail!

For better or worse (i think better) our society places greater responsibility & protection on the healthcare establishment than on parents in cases like these, and rightfully so, due to the obvious assymetry of information.

And most important of all–if we are to criminalize the refusal of parents to take their child to a doctor resulting in the childs death–shouldn’t we criminalize misjudgements by doctors that result in a childs death just the same. Even more so because in the case of the parents there is a reasonable presumption that they at least thought that they had the child’s best interest at heart. In the doctors case mental laziness and just not caring enough to really apply themselves is the more common cause.

Do white coats come with prison stripes?