Who Owns Your Child Part Two: Parental Rights Amendment

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Should the State have invincible authority over your child’s life?

By Jennifer Hartline, a Senior Contributor, The Stream, May 2, 2018

Jennifer HartlineIt comes down to this: Should the State have invincible authority over your child’s life?

Go deeper and answer another question: Are the rights of free persons granted by their government, or recognized as coming from God?

The people who fought to establish our free nation understood exactly where our most fundamental rights come from. In fact, they declared it “self-evident.” So obvious, so settled that no further debate was ever needed. The rights of free persons come from our Creator. Chief among them are “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” Government’s only say in the matter was to protect those rights as the consent of the governed allowed.

How will Americans answer that question today? From where, or from Whom, do your rights come?

Remember, what government bestows, government can also take away. If your right to Life is merely allowed you by the State, it can easily be denied. If your Liberty is merely tolerated by the State, the State can wantonly curtail and even revoke that Liberty.

If the State’s criteria for life worth living says your child’s life is not, then suddenly “compassion” requires your child cease to live. Your wishes, as the parent, become utterly irrelevant. Your rights as a parent no longer exist.

This is certainly the lesson Alfie Evans and Charlie Gard have taught us. That is the consequence of a governing system that hijacks the rights of parents and hands that power over to the State.

Not Just Over There in England

American parents are also facing aggressive challenges to their rights and authority.  It would be bad enough if the threat was confined to the doctor’s office or the hospital room, but it is not.

Today parents face a daily battle for custody of their children’s minds and bodies. The opponent they face is our education system and the new totalitarian sexual regime in America.

State-Sponsored Indoctrination

Who should decide what your child learns about sexuality, and when? Who determines what your child will be told about his or her own body and gender? From whom should your child learn about moral sexual conduct and marriage?

Across the nation, parents are being told they may not opt-out of the “instruction” the school wants to enforce regarding gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, and even sexual practice. School districts are doing an end-run around parents by mandating this “instruction” as part of science class, or health class, or some other heading that allows them to avoid the “Sex Ed” label. So armed, they can mandate student participation without parental consent or knowledge.

We showed you the memo out of Orange County, CA.  It explicitly states parents cannot excuse their children from the mandated “instruction.” Parents can only “advise” their kids later on that they “disagree” with the State.

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The situation is echoed in Fairfax County, VA. Students there will be told “biological sex is essentially meaningless.” The undisputed scientific evidence for the reality of biological sex as male or female is not welcome. The new agenda overrules the facts.

As early as kindergarten, children are being brainwashed by “LGBTQ+” madness. Yet parents are told they cannot excuse their child.

What if Johnny’s parents don’t want to encourage their son to be a girl, since he is in reality, a boy? What if they refuse to call him Jane, dress him differently, and help him “transition”? What if they want to help Johnny accept his healthy male body as God made him?

What if Mom and Dad object to their pre-pubescent child taking artificial hormones that will forestall natural puberty and wreak havoc with their child’s health? What if Mom and Dad don’t want their child left permanently infertile and mutilated?

Parents could easily have a terrifying legal fight on their hands, as the State — under the rule of the totalitarian sexual regime — pronounces their views “harmful” and deprives them of their right to make such critical decisions for their own child.

We Need the Parental Rights Amendment

Parents should be the ones making life-and-death medical decisions for their sick child, not the State. Parents do not automatically surrender their parental rights at the hospital entrance. Doctors and judges must not be granted invincible authority over a child’s life.

Neither must the school system. Parents have the fundamental right to direct their children’s upbringing and education. Period. This absolutely includes the right to instruct and form their children in matters of sexuality, sexual practice, marriage, and procreation. Parents must be able to protect their children from forced “LGBTQ+” indoctrination.

The Parental Rights Amendment presently waits in the Senate, to be introduced to the House. It must be passed and signed into law. Familiarize yourself with the amendment, and tell Congress to pass it. Protect the rights of parents in the United States.

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Jennifer Hartline is a Senior Contributor to The Stream. She is a proud Army wife and mother of four children. She writes passionately on the issues of Life, faith, family and culture, and has been published extensively at Catholic Online and at Catholic Stand. She is currently pursuing a degree in Theology at Holy Apostles College and Seminary. She runs on dark chocolate and peppermint mochas.

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