Tag Archives: Topic: Parental Rights

LifeSiteNews: The Hamilton-area Christian father who is suing the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board after the board refused his repeated requests over two years to withdraw his children from classes dealing with homosexuality and other sensitive issues, is coming under attack from the local newspaper, The Spectator.

NY Times: But the specter of those plans — an oft-cited goal of Mayor Rahm Emanuel — hangs heavily over the teachers’ strike. “Even if it’s not explicitly something that we’re bargaining over,” said Jackson Potter, staff coordinator for the Chicago Teachers Union, “everyone knows it’s the elephant in the room.”

Deanne Katz at Findlaw: More parents than ever are not vaccinating their children against common childhood diseases, citing both religious and medical reasons. But that choice not to vaccinate could make those parents liable if their unvaccinated child makes someone else sick. This may sound like a remote possibility but there is already a relevant law on the books.

Benjamin Bull at Townhall: There is a growing so-called “children’s rights” movement that is attempting to hijack parental rights, and, as a result, prematurely end the life of ill children. A recent article in the Journal of Medical Ethics outlines the “suffering” and “torture” supposedly inflicted by parents who insist on continued medical treatment for their sick children.

Public Discourse: A California bill allowing children to have three legal parents will not help children, but instead will unnecessarily complicate their lives. The supposed need for California’s SB 1476 flowed directly from the drive to normalize same sex parenting and recognize same sex unions.

AP: Parents cite a variety of reasons for not immunizing their children, among them: religious values, concerns the shots themselves could cause illness and a belief that allowing children to get sick helps them to build a stronger immune system. Likewise, there’s no single explanation that accounts for why so many more parents who send their children to private schools apparently share a suspicion of immunizations.

Harold Cassidy at Public Discourse: “The Surrogate Uterus: Baby M and the Bioethics Commission Report”

Governor Christie’s recent veto of a “gestational” surrogacy bill should prompt us to look at the legal history of surrogacy and the terrible injustices that it causes . . . Gestational surrogacy is now front and center for debate, not only in New Jersey, but across the nation. It demands attention. Motherhood itself is now on trial.

Detroit Free Press: When both women want to conceive, it is common to take turns and to use the same sperm donor so there is a biological link between the children, says author and family therapist Arlene Lev, of Albany, N.Y. That’s how Appel and Bernstein brought Kobi, 14, and Talia, 11, into the world.

CBC.ca: The Canadian Medical Association Journal says it’s time to do away with the Criminal Code’s so-called spanking law. A strongly worded editorial in the journal Tuesday calls for the repeal of Section 43 of the Criminal Code, which gives parents and teachers a legal defence when they physically discipline children.

NJ Today: Assemblyman Tim Eustace on Thursday announced plans to introduce legislation that would ban the controversial practice known as “conversion therapy” aimed at changing the sexual orientation of minors, a measure similar to one that recently passed the California State Assembly overwhelmingly.

Liberty Counsel: “If the bill is signed into law, Liberty Counsel will sue on behalf of counselors, parents, and minors who provide, refer, or who receive and have found change therapy to be beneficial,” said Mat Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel.

Religion Clause Blog: According to Tuesday’s Santa Fe New Mexican, the New Mexico Department of Health has changed the form that parents must file to make clear that philosophical, rather than religious, beliefs are not a basis for exemption.

AP: A Minnesota football coach accused of taking pornographic videos of his children is offering a simple explanation: The images are nothing more than innocent family antics, unfairly misinterpreted by authorities as having the darkest possible motive.

LifeSiteNews: The fate of a 12-year-old boy injured by a gunshot to the head is in dispute after his mother, who is refusing to let doctors remove the boy’s organs for donation, had discovered that his food and water supply had been stopped.

Mercury News: A parents’ organization plans to return to court to force a Mojave Desert school district to accept a charter conversion proposal for a failing elementary school.

Houston Family Attorneys Blog: Does Texas allow for a rapist to gain custody or visitation of a child born from this crime?

FoxNews: A Massachusetts school district will be contacting parents in the next two weeks to detail a new program allowing students ages 12 and older to have access to condoms.

Steve Aden at Townhall: In Britain these days, parents of desperately ill children are literally ridiculed for trusting in God’s providence over and above the prognosis of doctors. In fact, an article recently published in the Journal of Medical Ethics contends that parents “torture” their children by keeping them alive once doctors have pronounced they have no chance of recovery.

American Federation for Children: The American Federation for Children—the nation’s voice for school choice—today condemned a recent blog post published by Diane Ravitch, an outspoken opponent of education reform, after the post featured comments she attributed to an anonymous Louisiana teacher that referred to some parents as abusers and rapists while questioning the ability of all parents to choose the best educational environments for their children. In response to the post, the Federation has launched the next phase of a campaign titled “Parents Know Best” . . .

AP: Janet Jenkins, of Fair Haven, filed the civil lawsuit Tuesday when a jury was announcing its guilty verdict against Mennonite pastor Kenneth Miller, who helped Lisa Miller and daughter Isabella flee.

VaccineNewsDaily: Six families in the state of West Virginia are suing the state’s Department of Health and Human Resources, claiming the agency cannot force new vaccine requirements upon schoolchildren.

CNSNews: Thanks to an Obamacare regulation that took effect on Aug. 1, health care plans in Oregon will now be required to provide free sterilizations to 15- year-old girls even if the parents of those girls do not consent to the procedure.

Florida Courier: The Florida Supreme Court will hear arguments Oct. 2 in a possibly first-of-its-kind case pitting two lesbian partners who used in-vitro fertilization to have a child but later ended their relationship. The case could be unprecedented in Florida because the fertilized egg of one woman was implanted in her then-partner, who gave birth.

Washington Post: Opposition is coming from the Interfaith Alliance, a national, nonpartisan grassroots and educational organization based in Washington that has 185,000 members nationwide made up of 75 faith traditions as well as those of no faith tradition.

Eugene Volokh at the Volokh Conspiracy: There’s been some recent buzz about this court decision, In the Matter of C (Romford County Ct. May 11, 2012); see, for instance, here,here, and here. I tend to think the court decision is correct, and here’s why . . .

This Article asks why any state would have religious exemptions thatpromote the religious practice of withholding medical treatment from dying children.  After an analysis of the most probable reasons for the statutes, the Article contends that all such religious exemptions should berepealed as violating public policy.  

Citizen Link: As a controversial bill making it illegal for counselors to help minors struggling with same-sex attractions or behaviors makes its way through the California Legislature, the state senator who authored it recently explained his motivation to a newspaper.

NY Daily News: Gov. Cuomo today signed a new law to further protect teens from health risks associated with body piercing.

The Hill: Three Republicans helped pass the United Nations treaty on people with disabilities out of committee on Thursday despite concerns over abortion. Sens. Dick Lugar (R-Ind.), John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) and Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) joined the 10 Democrats . . .

LifeSiteNews: A controversial IVF method resulting in 3-parent babies has recently been debated in the UK, but according to reports brought to light by Dr. Joseph Mercola of the health website Mercola.com, the technique has already been used in the US as far back as 1997.

Spokesman-Review: When should a parent lose custody of a young child for refusing consent for a medical procedure? How likely must the harm to the child be for that to happen, and what if the potential harm is unlikely but dire? And should doctors and police who seize custody and perform the procedure over parents’ objections bear any liability?

Ed News: A coalition of homeschoolers and supporters arrived in the Swedish capital of Stockholm after a six-day, 120-mile “Walk to Freedom” that was staged to raise awareness about a controversial ban on home education.

Di-Ve.com: The European Court of Human Rights, in a judgment given last Tuesday 17th July, found a violation of a mother’s rights stemming from the fact that, after her children had been put under a care order, she did not have access to an independent and impartial tribunal to review such order after circumstances had changed.

Christian Institute: Parents in Scotland should be prosecuted for smacking their children, a coalition of children’s charities has said.

HSLDA (embeds testimony by Mike Farris): Home School Legal Defense Association has been urging supporters to call their U.S. senators and ask them to oppose the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). And on Tuesday we reported that Patriot Voices chairman and former Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum had joined the fight. Your calls are working! This morning a prominent D.C. publication, The Hill, reported that the treaty has been temporarily derailed from the fast track . . .

Religion Clause Blog: Because of his religious belief in faith healing, defendant did not seek medical attention for his daughter who died of bacterial pneumonia and a blood infection associated with a large cystic mass that compromised her body’s immune defenses.

HSLDA on the Christian Newswire: Parental rights will be eviscerated by the mandatory application of the ‘best interest of the child’ standard,” said Farris. “If parents think that private education is best for their child, the CRPD gives the government the authority and the legal duty to override that judgment and keep the child in the government-approved program that the officials think is best for the child.”

AP: “You can’t make a rule to stop every accident,” Mosbacher said after his son Jacob hopped off the 40-year-old, 60-horsepower tractor at their farm near the tiny southern Illinois town of Fults. “There’s always a risk in life, no matter what you do.”

Christian Institute: Children who were smacked are more likely to suffer from mental health problems in later life, a controversial study has claimed. But questions have been raised about the study’s methods and the results do not actually provide any evidence that smacking causes mental illness.

Austin R. Nimocks at Townhall: From the moment the push to redefine marriage began, the most militant of the would-be redefiners deployed a “scorched earth policy” toward marriage to achieve their goals. In other words, they proved willing not just to alter, but also to destroy marriage and the family in order to establish conditions where they could reconstruct marriage – and all of society – according to their own designs.

One News Now: “They completely ignore the parental rights of parents,” asserts Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) attorney Jeremy Tedesco. “They think that they can use the schools to essentially fill the role of parents and exclude parents completely from aspects of their education.”

KJ Dell’Antonia at NY Times: Seeking, and Resisting, Vaccines
Recent studies suggest that as many as 21 percent of parents in the U.S. are delaying or refusing some or all of the recommended early childhood vaccines.

Meridian Magazine (LDS): The Alliance Defense Fund sent a letter Friday to the Davis School District in support of its policy that requires parental consent before children can check out a homosexual advocacy book titled “In Our Mothers’ House” from elementary school libraries . . . “Public schools should not surrender to ACLU intimidation when it asks them to expose children to sexual content without parental knowledge,” said ADF Legal Counsel Jeremy Tedesco. “Parents, not the ACLU, should decide whether young children have access to this type of propaganda, which is obviously aimed at re-educating children regarding the nature of the family. The law clearly upholds the right and duty of schools to protect children and respect the role of their parents.”

ADF affirms school’s decision to secure parental permission before children check out homosexual advocacy book from libraries

Turtle Bay and Beyond: . . . the Landgericht Köln (Cologne High Court), found in a recent judgment that the circumcision of a young boy at the request of his parents was an illegal assault against the boy’s bodily integrity, which, in principle, constitutes a punishable crime.

AP: An increasing number of parents are choosing to delay certain vaccinations for their young children, a new study shows, even as cases of whooping cough continue to rise nationwide. Portland, Oregon, parents were the subject of the study, which found that they are increasingly following alternative vaccination schedules, says MSNBC.com.

ADF Blog: lmost three years ago today, an unspeakable nightmare befell a loving innocent family simply because they wanted to educate their seven-year-old son from home.

LifeSiteNews: The U.S.-based Alliance Defense Fund and Home School Legal Defense Alliance are providing legal advice. “The government shouldn’t abduct and imprison children simply because it doesn’t like home schooling,” said ADF Legal Counsel Roger Kiska. “This family’s human rights have been unimaginably violated.”

One News Now: But now, says Roger Kiska of Alliance Defense Fund, the courts have finally sided with the family, stating the unanimous and extensive testimony of friends and family favoring Christer and Annie could not be ignored. “Social services has been evil, to put it in one word,” the attorney tells OneNewsNow . . . “… It’s happening in Germany, it’s now happening in Bulgaria — and when these things happen in Europe, they tend to make their down to the United States rather quickly,” warns Kiska. “There’s been a slew of bad precedent that the United States Supreme Court and state supreme courts have taken from Europe. So I think everyone needs to be aware.” [more]

Eugene Volokh at the Volokh Conspiracy: Dier v. Peters (Iowa June 1, 2012) offers a good discussion of the debate about paternity fraud lawsuits, including citations to cases that reject such a cause of action and to cases that accept it.

HSLDA on the Christian Newswire: ADF Legal Counsel Roger Kiska says the family’s human rights have been unimaginably violated. “The government shouldn’t abduct and imprison children simply because it doesn’t like home schooling,” said ADF Legal Counsel Roger Kiska. “We …

Domenic Johansson still in government captivity after three years

Christian Institute: A schoolgirl aged 15 was helped by teachers to have an abortion without her parents’ knowledge.

Novinite.com: “This is a clear-cut case of arbitrary use of power,” explained the family’s attorney, Viktor Kostov, who is working with the international Alliance Defense Fund on the case. “The authorities are trying to scare the family into bowing down to the [Social Services Child Protection Unit]‘s demand that the child go back to school … they have absolutely no grounds for accusing the father and mother of a crime.”

ParentRights.org: A proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would preserve the longstanding traditional right of parents to direct the upbringing and education of their children was introduced last night in the U.S. Congress.

Kansas City Star: Dear Mr. Dad: My girlfriend is pregnant. We’d talked about having children someday but hadn’t expected it would happen so soon. She wants to terminate the pregnancy. But all of a sudden I’m feeling very depressed. I really want to be a dad and her decision to have an abortion is going to put an end to that dream, at least for a while. I’ve always thought of myself as pro choice, but now that the decision affects me, I’m not so sure. Do I have a vote here?

Reuters: A divided New York Court of Appeals ruled on Thursday that custodial parents can be convicted of kidnapping their children. | People v. Leonard

Stephanie Saul at NY Times: Public Money Finds Back Door to Private Schools
Public school officials view the tax credits as poorly disguised state subsidies, part of an expanding agenda to shift tax dollars away from traditional public schools. “Our position is that this is a shell game,” said Chris Thomas, general counsel for the Arizona School Boards Association.

SCOTUS Blog: Case Information Page and Document Links _____________ SCOTUS Ruling here: Astrue v. Capato, No. 11-159 Eighteen months after her husband, Robert Capato, died of cancer, respondent Karen Capato gave birth to twins conceived through in vitro fertilization using …

Christian Newswire: The Holy See mission to the United Nations assembly in New York called upon UN Member States to respect the right of parents to homeschool their children in a statement before the United Nations two weeks ago.

LifeSiteNews: The Christian Post reports that Bulgaria’s government is instituting new family law asserting that while parents have responsibilities towards their children, they have no rights to make educational decisions. Viktor Kostov, a Bulgarian lawyer and human rights activist, reports . . . He warns that should the bill pass, it could be used by state ideologues to quash the religious and political rights of citizens by threatening their custody over their children. Freedom for All Advocates, the Alliance Defense Fund, and the Home School Legal Defense Association have intervened in the debate over the bill, warning that similar measures in other EU countries have resulted in the state having near-total control over families and children.

LifeSiteNews: “The State should respect the choices that parents make for their children and avoid attempts at ideological indoctrination,” the permanent observer mission of the Holy See to the United Nations wrote in a statement released last Tuesday.

Jerry Agar at the Toronto Sun: But it is a sad thing that people who call themselves conservatives will throw babies overboard for political expediency.

In many countries around the world, government authorities and even society in general are openly hostile or pessimistic toward homeschooling.

HSLDA: What happens when you make an informed decision to disagree with your doctor? If you’re an adult, that’s your right. But what about if you’re a parent deciding for your child? Mike Farris explains a recent court case that explores this issue, today on Home School Heartbeat.

FRC Washington Update: For now, it looks like the nanny goat state is on hold. After U.S. farmers, FRC, and other groups hollered our disapproval over new rules, the Labor Department finally relented. The regulations, which would have dictated children’s chore charts, were so overbearing that teenagers would have needed Washington’s approval to operate a power washer.

Eugene Volokh reports at the Volokh Conspiracy: An interesting Virginia Supreme Court decision, Wyatt v. McDermott (Va. Apr. 20, 2012), recognizes this right. An excerpt (paragraph breaks added) . .

LifeSiteNews: The woman reportedly paid the ex-boyfriend $1400 for what she considered to be a sperm donation, a service that he rendered to her through sexual intercourse. The woman considered herself a single mom, but allowed the father of the child to visit his daughter occasionally.

HSLDA: By enrolling their children in church schools not necessarily located within the city or county where they reside. Home School Legal Defense Association assisted a member family in Tuscaloosa County earlier this month when public school officials challenged their daughter’s enrollment in a church school outside the county. The family not only received a letter from the attendance officer stating that the church school enrollment form filed earlier with the superintendent was unacceptable, but they also received a Notice of Noncompliance with Alabama Compulsory Attendance Law that threatened criminal prosecution in three days.

Daily Caller: A proposal from the Obama administration to prevent children from doing farm chores has drawn plenty of criticism from rural-district members of Congress. But now it’s attracting barbs from farm kids themselves.

Fox40.com: Senate Bill 1172 would ban children under 18 from undergoing these therapies and would require adults seeking these treatments to sign consent forms that they are aware of potential dangers. | “Think Progress” provides more information about the bill including the mandatory statement.

Findlaw: A California appellate court has clarified that a sperm donor who is not married to a designated recipient mother does not have to pay child support.

Philadelphia Inquirer: For the first time, a Pennsylvania appeals court has confronted the complex question of who gets custody of embryos, ruling this week in favor of a Chester County woman who hopes to give birth using frozen embryos that her estranged husband wants destroyed . . . The three-judge Superior Court panel affirmed and quoted the trial court’s reasoning: “Because Wife cannot achieve genetic parenthood otherwise, we conclude that Wife’s interest in biological procreation through the use of these pre-embryos outweighs Husband’s professed interest against procreation.” | Opinion: Reber v. Reiss | Hat tip: How Appealing

Holland, Mary S., Compulsory Vaccination, the Constitution, and the Hepatitis B Mandate for Infants and Young Children (February 28, 2012). Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law, and Ethics, Vol. 12, No. 1, p. 39, 2012; NYU School of Law, Public …

Pacific Justice Institute: AB 2109 by Assemblyman Richard Pan (D-Sacramento), seeks to rein in parents who object to mandatory vaccines for students. Current law allows parents to opt out by sending a letter to the school, expressing the beliefs that prompted their decision. Assemblyman Pan’s bill would require the creation of a new government form for those parents to complete, and would also require them to get a signature and information from a doctor, nurse practitioner or physician’s assistant about vaccines and communicable diseases.