The story began in early 2017, when Abigail Piland was born without any obvious problems. But when the midwife who helped deliver her checked back the next day, Abigail didn’t look healthy. The midwife told mother Rachel Piland to take the child to a hospital because the baby “could suffer brain damage or die if not properly cared for.”

Rachel refused, insisting “God makes no mistakes.”

Days later, Abigail was dead. (Rachel and her husband Joshua then prayed for Abigail’s resurrection. Surprise: That didn’t work, either.)

A medical examiner later attributed the death to “unconjugated hyperbilirubinemia and kernicterus,” both jaundice-related problems that were treatable. Abigail never had the chance to see a doctor when blood was coming out of her mouth, or when she wasn’t eating, or when her skin became further discolored. All because her parents put more trust in God than someone who could actually help.

  • ByteJunk@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    How liberating it must be to just dump everything single thing on “god’s will”, and have to worry about nothing, ever.

    It’s fucking depressing… This isn’t even about religion, it’s about untreated, likely even undiagnosed, mental illness.

    • iAvicenna@lemmy.world
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      19 hours ago

      yea the annoying thing is they won’t feel remorse too, they will just say it was God’s will, we will try again.

      • OutlierBlue@lemmy.ca
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        18 hours ago

        Read the story. That’s literally what they did. They had two more kids after they killed Abigail. And in court they said they would do exactly the same thing again.

    • Beebabe@lemmy.world
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      20 hours ago

      No kidding. They’ll do something shitty then apologize to their imaginary friend in their head and move along while the rest of the world burns.

    • Damaskox@lemmy.world
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      18 hours ago

      And it makes me wonder how lonely it must feel to try contact a being that never replies anything back.
      Or maybe they feel like it does talk back? I don’t know.

      • burntbacon@discuss.tchncs.de
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        15 hours ago

        From experience with these sorts of folks, they take positive things as the reply, and just don’t think about negatives. The rare negative that they can’t ignore gets blamed on other people who aren’t believers, or whatever their version of ‘the devil’ is.