No winners in Jensen saga

In the case of Parker Jensen, there wasn't anything left for state child welfare officials to do but walk away. The Jensens will decide if and how they will treat the boy's cancer, although a medical neglect petition remains before a 3rd District Juvenile Court judge.

Some in the so-called "parental rights" movement consider the state's retreat a victory but they shouldn't. It was an extraordinary case in which the fix would have required an extreme response from the state — removing a boy from his home to undergo chemotherapy, a treatment his family has resisted from Day One. Forcing chemotherapy upon the boy was not a workable solution.

But the state's decision in this case should not be construed as a sanction of bad behavior from other parents who disagree with interventions the state has ordered. Nor should the Jensens' experience be considered a textbook case for reforming the state's child-welfare statutes. The Jensens defied court orders, spirited their son out of state for medical evaluation and entered agreements they have not yet honored.

Most outrageous were their claims that members of Utah's medical profession had precluded them from obtaining a second opinion about their son's diagnosis of Ewing's sarcoma when Primary Children's Medical Center offered to pay for the boy to be evaluated at Harvard University, according to a statement by guardian ad litem Mollie McDonald, who was appointed by the juvenile court to represent Parker Jensen's interests. The Jensens refused, according to McDonald.

Before legislators start drafting bills to address what could be considered an extreme case, they must consider the harm that could come to other children when the fixes are not so extreme but the risks to the child are just as great.

Lawmakers need to be mindful of children such as David Fink, who in 1998 was taken into custody after he was starved by parents who fed him only watermelon and lettuce as proscribed by the family's religious beliefs. The boy's parents kidnapped him from Primary Children's Hospital but were found 16 weeks later camped in a Montana forest, where the boy's mother had given birth to a second son. Both parents were convicted. Chris Fink served 18 months in the Salt Lake County jail; Kyndra Lee was given three years of probation. Their parental rights were terminated, and the boys were adopted out of state.