Tag Archives: Topic: Parental Rights

Doug Napier at Townhall: For years, Iowa law relied on a rather reasonable bit of biological reality: it takes a man and a woman to make a baby. From that fact, the state reasoned that for questions of paternity, the answer would involve someone commonly called a “father.” So when the state recorded births as a matter of public record, it (rather logically) looked for a man as the non-birth parent. As reasonable as that may seem, in the brave new world of “marriage equality” it is now “prejudicial” for state officials to ask this simple “who’s your daddy?” question.

LifeNews: In a story making news this week, last August a twelve-year old girl Washington girl was raped and impregnated by a thirty-one year-old man who took her to a Washington State Planned Parenthood and forced her to have an abortion. According to reports, she told Planned Parenthood that the father was a fourteen-year old boy in an effort to protect the identity of her rapist; presumably at the recommendation of her rapist.

AP: The Obama administration on Monday filed a last-minute appeal to delay the sale of the morning-after contraceptive pill to girls of any age without a prescription.

Bloomberg: The case is Tummino v. Hamburg, 12-cv-00763, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New York (Brooklyn). The appeal is Tummino v. Hamburg, 13-1690, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (Manhattan).

Baptist Press: Alan Sears, president of Alliance Defending Freedom, noted that a key benefit of ADF’s involvement in helping defend religious freedom overseas is “the crucial perspective it gives us” for defending legal rights in America.”

AP: A federal judge, asked by the government on Tuesday to freeze his plan giving teenage girls broader access to morning-after birth control, instead seized the chance to accuse health officials of taking steps that would end up hurting poor people and improve their chances of prevailing in a protracted legal fight with reproductive rights advocates.

One News Now: Roger Kiska, legal counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, explains the state’s point of view. “They’re absolutely oppressive with regard to parental rights. They believe that the only duty of the parents basically is to give birth and then the child belongs to the state,” he tells American Family News. “So we had known all along that this was going to be something that would have to be taken from Sweden and brought to the European level.” Kiska says the remaining option is to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, which has jurisdiction over Sweden. [more]

Ruth Institute: Middle-school California kids, now you can be as sexually profligate as you want to be–and your parents don’t even have to know about it! The California Condom Access Project, run by the California Health Council, which is making condoms available for kids as young as 12 in an online, taxpayer-funded condom delivery service, has expanded their service to include San Diego and Fresno counties.

Des Moines Register: Married same-sex couples have the same rights as married heterosexuals to have both parents listed on the birth certificates of their newborn children, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled this morning. Justices ruled 6-0 . . . | Gartner v. Iowa Dept. of Public Health

Lyle Denniston at SCOTUS Blog: The Obama administration is making a sustained effort to keep the youngest girls who are sexually active from having easy access to the pregnancy-preventing drug known as “Plan B.” Taking another step toward what may be an ultimate test in the Supreme Court, the administration will ask a federal judge in New York at a hearing Tuesday to put on hold his decision to make Plan B available over the counter — without a prescription –to women of all ages.

AP: Reproductive rights advocates urged a judge Monday to let teenage girls buy morning-after birth control without a prescription beginning this week, saying to delay enforcement of his ruling while the government appeals would cause “certain, significant and irreparable” harm to women.

LifeSiteNews: Roger Kiska, the Alliance Defending Freedom’s senior legal counsel in Europe, was outraged by the court’s action. “It is beyond belief that a modern civilized country could allow such injustice to continue,” he said. “There is no evidence in the record that justifies the continued separation of this family. We will continue to fight for this family and on behalf of the principle that the European Convention condemns such acts.”

NBC Montana: The 2013 legislative session wrapped up in Montana at the start of the weekend, and now Planned Parenthood of Montana says they’re planning to sue the state over a bill passed that requires anyone under 18 to get parental consent for an abortion.

One News Now: Alliance Defending Freedom attorney Roger Kiska contends that the state wants to be the parent of all students, indoctrinating them with the state’s ideology. “I’ve heard statements in Sweden and in France recently that the role of the parent is simply to give birth to a child, and then it’s the state’s duty to educate the child,” Kiska accounts. “That’s absolutely contrary to international law and morality.”

HSLDA: Roger Kiska, the Alliance Defending Freedom’s senior legal counsel in Europe, was outraged by the court’s action. “It is beyond belief that a modern civilized country could allow such injustice to continue,” he said. “There is no evidence in the record that justifies the continued separation of this family. We will continue to fight for this family and on behalf of the principle that the European Convention condemns such acts.”

Washington Post: For the second straight year, significant parent opposition to “parent trigger” legislation in Florida has led to defeat in the legislature despite powerful supporters, including former governor Jeb Bush.

MO Family Policy Council: The Missouri House has advanced legislation which would provide constitutional protection to the right of parents to guide the upbringing of their children. The House has given preliminary approval to House Joint Resolution 26, sponsored by Representative Todd Richardson of Poplar Bluff.

AP: The government is moving the morning-after pill over the counter but only those 15 and older can buy it – an attempt to find middle ground just days before a court-imposed deadline to lift all age restrictions on the emergency contraceptive.

WorldNetDaily: Outraged parents say a New York middle school instructed young female students to ask one another for a lesbian kiss – and boys learned how to spot young sluts – in an anti-bullying presentation on gender identity and sexual orientation, according to Fox News’ Todd Starnes.

MercatorNet.com: But Gotland (province) Social Services persisted, and managed to get a mid-level appeal court to overturn the district court ruling. Now the couple, with the aid of the US-based Homeschool Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) and the Alliance Defending Freedom, have taken their case to the Supreme Court of Sweden. They are being represented by Ruby Harrold-Claesson of the Nordic Committee on Human Rights. . . . Alliance Defending Freedom and HSLDA are encouraging concerned people from all over the world to participate in an HSLDA-sponsored letter-writing campaign that asks the Supreme Court of Sweden to accept the case Johansson v. Gotland Social Services and return Domenic to his parents.

Baptist Press: A German family should be granted asylum in the U.S. because their s native government is denying a fundamental human right by preventing them from homeschooling their children, attorney Michael Farris told a three-judge panel of the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals Tuesday (April 23) in Cincinnati.

Huffington Post: Home-schooling families in Europe have become a cause celebre for some U.S. conservatives. The Arizona-based Alliance Defending Freedom is working with two Swedish home-schooling families, including Christer and Annie Johansson, who lost custody of 11-year-old Domenic when they refused to enroll him in public school.

CBN (includes video): Alliance Defending Freedom and the Home-School Legal Defense Association have asked the European court of Human Rights to hear the case of a Swedish family heavily fined for home-schooling.

Topeka Capitol-Journal: The U.S. Supreme Court five years ago sided with the Kansas high court that Topekan Daryl Hendrix couldn’t be a part of the lives of two children conceived by artificial insemination using his sperm.

weden’s highest court is being asked to free an 11-year-old boy whom government officials have held in captivity for four years because his parents home-schooled him. Attorneys with Alliance Defending Freedom and the Home School Legal Defense Association are legal advisors to the parents, who are represented by Ruby Harrold-Claesson of the Nordic Committee on Human Rights.

WorldNetDaily: Swedish parents Annie and Christer Johansson have launched what may be their last hope to see their son again – with an appeal to the Supreme Court of Sweden to overturn a lower court’s decision to end their parental rights over homeschooling . . . he HSLDA has been working on Domenic’s case, along with officials from the Alliance Defending Freedom.
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/04/homeschool-parents-have-1-shot-to-see-son-again/#vPLSHHFWFSdLzt1K.99

Melissa Moschella at Public Discourse: Children’s relationship to the political community is fundamentally different from that of adults, because it is mediated through their belonging to a family and living under the authority of their parents.

Rasmussen: Fifty-seven percent (57%) oppose the availability of the contraceptive for those that young without a prescription. Ten percent (10%) are undecided

Michael Brown at Townhall: The last time I bought some daytime cold medicine at the grocery store, I was flagged by the machine in the self-checkout aisle, requiring me to show my ID to the cashier. Since I’m 58 years-old with gray hair and a white mustache, the cashier quickly waved me on, but the lesson was clear: In order to buy something as harmless as Dayquil, I needed to be at least 18 years-old. Yet according to a recent court ruling, a minor can buy an over-the-counter abortion pill without showing any ID. What kind of madness is this? It is the madness of a society spinning into moral chaos, a society in which . . .

Catherine Glenn Foster at American Thinker: On April 5, Federal District Court Judge Edward R. Korman ordered the Food and Drug Administration to allow over-the-counter distribution of Plan B abortifacient pills to girls of any age, thus striking down even the Obama administration’s practice of requiring a prescription for girls 16 years old and younger.

Robert Knight at Townhall: A courageous German Christian couple refused to hand over their children to the government schools and fled to America three years ago. Now, the Obama Administration is trying to send them back. A likely outcome would be the state seizing the children and imprisoning the parents.

Newsbusters: Melissa Harris-Perry declaring in an ad that we must “break through” the “private notion” that “your kid is yours” because “kids belong to whole communities” is an outrage. This isn’t what Mediaite called “a collection of tired progressive cliches on steroids.” This is shredding the notion of family, replacing it with the commands of the state.

Religion Clause Blog: In In re M.M., (OR App., April 3, 2013), the Oregon Court of Appeals upheld the authority of a juvenile court to order immunization of children who are wards of the court, even though the children’s mother and father have religious objections to immunization.

“Parents and trained physicians are the ones responsible for the care of underage patients. The court’s decision wrongly allows pharmacies to distribute a life-ending drug over the counter to young girls without their parents’ or doctor’s knowledge or consent.

CNSNews: In a scathing rebuke of the Obama administration, a federal judge ruled Friday that age restrictions on over-the-counter sales of the morning-after pill are “arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable” and must end within 30 days.

Christian Newswire: Focus on the Family spokesman and Truth Project founder Dr. Del Tackett yesterday declared his support for HSLDA’s efforts to defend the Romeike family. Tackett believes that the U.S. government is siding with the restrictive homeschooling laws in Germany and that this could have serious implications for American homeschoolers.

Christian Institute: An MP has failed in an attempt to make a ban on smacking part of the Scottish Liberal Democrat’s official party policy. Edinburgh West MP Mike Crockart wanted to scrap the defence of “reasonable chastisement” that allows parents to physically discipline their children. Mr Crockart said he had smacked his own son, but now wanted to outlaw the practice.

Politico: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie says he’s still against same-sex marriage and is undecided about a state bill that would ban “gay conversion” therapy.

Nancy E. Dowd at Family Scholars: In What is Parenthood? Linda McClain and Daniel Cere bring together an interdisciplinary group of scholars in a dialogue about parenthood, marriage, and the role of law, loosely organized around two radically different models. The integrative model generally views optimal parenthood as marital; optimal marriage as heterosexual (based on a perspective of sex differences); and optimal parent-child connections as biological. The alternative diversity model defines parent-child relationships not only by biology or adoption but also functionally, without attachment to a particular number or gender of parents, or to marriage as a preferred parental status.

BBC: The UK has moved closer to becoming the first country to allow the creation of babies from three people.

AP: Britain’s fertility regulator says it has found broad public support for in vitro fertilization techniques that allow babies to be created with DNA from three people for couples at risk of passing on potentia

Jillian Kay Melchior at NRO: Uwe and Hannelore Romeike fled to the United States in 2008, claiming the German government had denied their religious freedom by forbidding them from homeschooling their children. Now, the Obama administration is trying to send them back, even though the Romeikes might lose their children if they’re deported to Germany.

Citizen Link: Last November, Montanans voted for the Parental Notification Act by a 71 percent margin. This law requires abortion providers to notify at least one parent of a minor under the age of 16 prior to performing an abortion.

LifeNews: The Oklahoma state legislature today approved a measure that would allow parents to be notified when their minor daughter is considering an abortion. Such a law would help parents steer their young daughters in a better direction.

LifeNews: Oklahomans for Life is supporting the Parental Notification for Abortion Act, HB 1588, which requires that a parent of a minor must be notified before an abortion can be performed on her.

Todd Starnes at Townhall: The Romeike family fled their German homeland in 2008 seeking political asylum in the United States – where they hoped to home school their children. Instead, the Obama administration wants the evangelical Christian family deported.

Gary Ledbetter at Baptist Press: The reasoning of the U.S. Department of Justice is that no religious liberty issue exists with the Romeike case because the German law is not religiously orientated — all Germans are forbidden to educate their children, not just Christian ones.

Ben Bull at Townhall: Some sentences are made of words while others are made of jail time. And home-schooling families focused on the former kind of sentences are increasingly finding themselves under the threat of the latter—even in America. For example, consider Uwe and Hannelore Romeike

Topeka Capital-Journal: Citing a first-of-its-kind Kansas Supreme Court ruling made Friday, Topekan Angela Bauer on Wednesday sought the right to intervene in a case in which the state contends sperm donor William Marotta is legally the father of the daughter born to her former lesbian partner, Jennifer Schreiner.

World: It’s one of many custody battles in which courts have ruled in favor of the “right” of same-sex couples to have children, instead of the right for children to have both a mother and father.

Turtle Bay and Beyond: The Court establishes that the impossibility of second-parent adoption in a same-sex relationship is discriminatory when such adoption is possible for unmarried heterosexual couples, although the exclusion of the biological parent. The reasoning may be thus summarised: If the woman had been a man, the adoption would have been possible, so it must be possible in the name of non-discrimination according to sexual orientation while the woman is not a man.

Baptist Press: The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of appeals has agreed to hear the case of a Christian family from Germany seeking asylum in the U.S. over their resolve to homeschool their five school-age children.

Jurist: The Kansas Supreme Court [official website] on Friday ruled [opinion, PDF] that a non-biological mother of children conceived using assisted reproductive technologies has parentage rights under Kansas law. Kelly Goudschaal and Marci Frazier were in a committed, long-term, same-sex relationship and had two children via artificial insemination. The couple executed a co-parenting agreement and after they separated, Frazier filed suit to enforce the agreement.

AP: A couple who fled Germany with their five children over fears they would lose custody for not sending them to school has asked a federal appeals court to grant them asylum in the U.S.

One News Now: According to Casey, the teen’s case is not unusual, adding that Texas girls being forced into an abortion can contact the Texas Center for Defense of Life for help. Alliance Defending Freedom makes itself available for such matters across the U.S.

Christian Institute: An influential group of NHS experts is urging the Scottish Government to allow the morning-after pill to be handed out in schools.

LifeSiteNews: A judge has granted an injunction to the pregnant Houston teenager who sued her parents to stop them from forcing her to have an abortion. Attorneys with the Texas Center for Defense of Life (TCDL), who represented the girl, were granted a long-term injunction by the 308th Family District Court of Harris County, prohibiting the girl’s parents from coercing her to have an abortion for the entire duration of her pregnancy.

ABC News 4: In October, the guardian ad litem for 3-year-old Baby Veronica caught in the middle of a custody battle filed a brief to the United States Supreme Court in support of the toddler’s adoptive parents, asking the high court to hear the case. | SCOTUS Blog Case Information

ABC: A pregnant 16-year-old Texas girl is suing her parents, claiming that her parents are attempting to force her to have an abortion . . . The teen, identified in the lawsuit only as R.E.K. since she is a minor, was “beside herself” when she called the center for help, her lawyer Stephen Casey told ABCNews.com. | Related report and video.

Fox News: A Miami-Dade circuit judge has reportedly approved an adoption allowing three people — a gay man and a married lesbian couple — to be listed on the birth certificate of their 23-month-old daughter.

TheNewsTribune.com: A hearing on a bill that would require minors to notify their parents before terminating a pregnancy pitted those who argued it was an issue of parental rights against those who say the measure is an effort to restrict access to abortion.

LifeSiteNews: Under state law, schools do not need to obtain parental consent to dispense the drugs. The $2.7 million program has provided contraceptives to 22,400 teens as young as 14.

Education News: Handouts of the “morning-after pill” to sexually active students have skyrocketed under an unpublicized project in which health centers in public schools offer girls a full menu of free birth-control drugs and devices, records obtained by The Post show.

AP: Forty-seven-year-old Kenneth Miller was convicted last summer of helping Lisa Miller and her daughter leave the country in September 2009 to avoid sharing custody with her former partner.

LifeNews: A new bill introduced in the U.S. Senate would stop the practice of adults other than a teenage girl’s parents from taking her to another state for an abortion.

Eugene Volokh at the Volokh Conspiracy: The Center for Law and Religion Forum had a post a couple of weeks ago about a talk by Erwin Chemerinsky (dean of the new UC Irvine law school), in which he made a rather striking proposal. Indeed, Dean Chemerinsky has made the proposal in print several years ago, in an article titled Separate and Unequal: American Public Education Today, so I thought I’d quote that article and put the matter in Chemerinsky’s own words, because I think it more broadly illuminates the danger that excessive equality arguments pose to liberty . . . A clearer example of how an excessive focus on equality undermines liberty is hard to find. And the implications of this argument, if it were accepted, are striking.

Yakima Herald: A state Senate bill that would require any girl younger than 18 to notify her parent or guardian before having an abortion will soon get a hearing.

Marilyn Stowe Blog: The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has upheld a claim by a Croatian woman that her rights under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights were breached when her newborn child was removed without her consent.

Union Leader: A sponsor of legislation to allow parents to opt out of sex education for their children says it will mean parents will no longer have to claim religious objections to the subject matter to keep their kids out of the classes.

LifeNews: Everyday more the collective mindset of “rights” gains ground in this country. We see sophisticated advertisements on all media for a myriad of issues – from animal rights to gay rights, from the right to bear arms to women’s reproductive rights. It’s the catchiest of all catch phrases – our rights. Forty years ago, however, the Supreme Court opined that men have zero reproductive rights – none what so ever.

Mirror of Justice: am not attending the AALS conference this year, but I thought to reproduce (with permission) a message on a constitutional law listserv that I’m on, written by Pepperdine law professor Mark Scarberry. Mark reports his impressions of a presentation by UC Irvine law dean Erwin Chemerinsky . . .

NPR reports (includes audio).

The Topeka Capitol Journal: The state agency seeking child support payments from a Topeka man who donated sperm to a lesbian couple says one of the women “clearly deceived” the department.

AP: Like a handful of other countries, including Germany and Denmark, Iceland has official rules about what a baby can be named.

Liberty Counsel: Today, Liberty Counsel filed its Opening Brief at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals against the California ban on change therapy (SB 1172), which would ban any counseling to minors seeking to diminish or eliminate unwanted same-sex sexual attractions, behavior or identity. On December 21, 2012, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Pickup v. Brown granted Liberty Counsel’s Emergency Motion to temporarily block the law from going into effect on January 1, 2013, as previously scheduled.