February 10, 2023

State legislatures, along with enthusiastic parents, are proposing parental rights legislation. A national group tracking parental rights legislation reports  that 15 states have adopted statutes that “protect” parental rights. They believe enshrining parental rights into law will make parental rights more powerful, but history suggests otherwise. 

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Infringements on parents are happening everywhere. Schools are teaching children inappropriate sexual information, teaching children they are nothing more than a color or gender, recruiting children into gender-dysphoria, hiding the evidence from parents, facilitating access to unauthorized medical treatment for children, and instructing children not to tell their parents what is happening. Finding the means to prevent the atrocious encroachments on the relationship between children and parents is urgent and necessary.

What if Parental Rights laws only serve to undermine actual parental rights? 

Our Founding Fathers believed that our rights are inalienable, incapable of being surrendered or transferred, because they are given to us by our Creator. Our rights do not come from government — they come from God. Our Founding Fathers recognized that by codifying rights, the definition and scope of the rights becomes legitimate points of debate, hence they did not originally want to write the Bill of Rights.

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An excellent explanation of constitutional rights comes from the law firm of Robert J. Frank & Assoc. LLC:

The U.S. Constitution recognizes that human beings have “certain inalienable rights” to which they are entitled which arise as a matter of natural right. The most important of these rights are called “Fundamental Rights.” Fundamental Rights are rights that are so “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty” that “neither liberty nor justice would exist if they were sacrificed.” The Supreme Court has recognized that fundamental rights include… special “liberty” interests… “the rights to marry, to have children, to direct the education and upbringing of one’s children, to marital privacy, and to bodily integrity.”

Enumerated rights are a target for government control and regulation. Consider the current conversations concerning the right of free speech and the right to bear arms. Free speech is being limited by the arbitrary assertion that only non-offensive speech is permitted. The right to bear arms is considered acceptable only if the arms are just for sport hunting and are licensed by the government.

From the proposed South Carolina Parental Bill of Rights:

TO PROHIBIT CERTAIN GOVERNMENT INFRINGEMENT ON THE FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS OF PARENTS TO DIRECT THE UPBRINGING, EDUCATION, HEALTH CARE, AND MENTAL HEALTH CARE OF THEIR CHILDREN EXCEPT IN LIMITED CIRCUMSTANCES.

“Certain” infringement? Prohibited “except in limited circumstances?” Who decides which infringements? Who defines the exceptions? Legislation attempts to define the details, but the implementing bureaucracy has leverage to the details, and legislation can be modified over time. This is very dangerous wording.