Parents or the State: Who Decides?

theBeacon ^ | 06.04.09 | Most Reverend Arthur J. Serratelli, S.T.D., S.S.L., D.D

[Coleus]

After one week on the lam, Colleen Hauser and her son, 13-year-old Daniel, returned home on Monday, May 25, 2009. They had fled the family's Minnesota farm when a judge ordered Daniel to undergo chemotherapy.  Because Colleen Hauser returned voluntarily, she was not arrested.  Brown County Family Services wanted Daniel to stay in the county's custody.  But, the young boy was left in the care of his parents.  This emotionally charged incident, reported widely by the media, raises a very important issue.  Who determines what is best for children?  The State was concerned about the boy’s health and life.  So were the parents.  Who decides in such cases? When do parents lose their right to raise their children as they see fit? When should the State intervene?  This is not a new question. It was raised many years ago, not in terms of a child’s health, but in terms of a child’s education.

 

In 1922, when prejudice and bigotry plagued Catholics, a law was passed in Oregon that effectively removed the right of parents to educate their children in Catholic schools.  Parents were obliged to send their children to public schools.  If they refused, they faced a fine of one hundred dollars and up to a month in jail.  The law never used the word “Catholic.”  But its intent was clear: to close all Catholic schools in an effort to keep children from “papist” views.  The Society of Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary challenged the law.  In 1925, The Supreme Court heard the case.  In Pierce v. Society of Sisters, the court ruled that the State of Oregon could not constitutionally compel all school students to attend public schools.  

The court stated, “The fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments in this Union repose excludes any general power of the State to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only.  The child is not the mere creature of the State; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations” (Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510, 1925).

 

The court’s decision did more than address the ugly reality of anti-Catholicism. It safeguarded parental choice in the upbringing of their children.  Parents have the right to bring up their children not only to be well-educated citizens, but also to be formed in their own religious tradition.  The child can never be seen as “the mere creature of the State.”  

On many other occasions, the Supreme Court has affirmed parental rights.  In Troxel v. Granville, the court stated, “The liberty … of parents in the care, custody, and control of their children is perhaps the oldest of the fundamental liberty interests recognized by this Court.” (530 U.S. 57, 2000)  In Parham v. J. R., the court also said, “The law's concept of the family rests on a presumption that parents possess what a child lacks in maturity, experience, and capacity for judgment required for making life's difficult decisions.  More important, historically it has recognized that natural bonds of affection lead parents to act in the best interests of their children” (442 U.S. 584, 1979).

 

However, the future is not so secure. Parental rights are implied rights. There are no explicit provisions for them in the Constitution.  Practically, this means that the courts can redefine their meaning as they see fit.

 

On March 31, 2009, a proposed constitutional amendment was introduced into Congress to safeguard parental rights in the face of government intrusion.  The Parental Rights Amendment seeks to guarantee that parents have the fundamental right to raise their children as they see fit. Thus, the family would be protected from the long arm of the government.  Should not parents be informed when prescription drugs are given to their children?  Should children be able to receive contraception or have an abortion without the parents’ knowledge or consent? Should those who provide Medicaid benefits be prohibited from sharing “confidential” information about minors to their parents?  Who has the right to decide what is or is not in the best interests of those not yet adults?  These are not academic questions.  Our legislators are constantly debating and voting on these very issues.

 

While the legislators discuss the issue, judges are already deciding it.  In Washington State, a thirteen-year-old boy told school counselors that his parents made him go to church too often.  With their advice, the boy brought the complaint to Child Protective Services.  As a result, he was taken from his home and placed in foster care.  Only later were the parents able to bring their son home when they agreed to the judge’s decision about the frequency of church attendance.  Is this not an intrusion into the vital relationship of parent and child? (Jim Daly, “Should Uncle Sam Raise Your Children,” April 8, 2009)

 

One impetus to take a good look at parental rights comes from The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).  This international treaty grants substantive rights to all children and young people.  The treaty’s desire to insure access to education and health care is good. The treaty’s goal of helping young people develop their abilities and talents to the fullest potential is laudable. But how does the authority of the parent enter in making these decisions for the good of the child?

 

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child would give the UN social services system the power to override parents’ choices and mandate what it judged was in the best interest of the child.  Under the terms of UNCRC, no longer could the biblical proverb “Spare the rod, spoil the child” (cf. Proverbs 13:24) claim legal support.  A ban on physical punishment is certainly not a bad thing.  But the apparently harmless provision that children should be taught in a religiously tolerant manner could lead to a loss of liberty.

 

According to Catholic teaching, Jesus is the complete and definitive revelation of God.  “He is … the one Savior of the world.  ‘Before the world began, God predestined us …to be his adopted children in Christ…and to bring everything together under Christ as head, everything in heaven and everything on earth.’ (Eph 1: 5. 10) There is only one plan for salvation.” (Evangelization: Grace and Vocation, May 11, 2008, 53)  Would the right for children to be taught in a religiously tolerant manner, then, lead some to say this teaching violates the treaty? The American Bar Association supports the treaty and has already offered the opinion that teaching children that Jesus is the only way to God goes against the spirit of the UNCRC.

 

In Article 3 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) affirms that “the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration.  Thus, policies affecting children at all levels of society and government should have the child’s best interest as the primary concern.” Would the language of “best interests of the child” become the means for the State to replace the parents’ authority over their own children?

 

If the State substitutes the authority of the parents, children eventually will have the right to reproductive services and abortions without parental consent. Parents would no longer be able to opt out of sex education as given in public schools.   The parent-child relationship is vital for society.  Both parents and State have a stake in the welfare of children.  Who would deny the right of the State to intervene when the life of the child is endangered or the child is suffering abuse? But who would want the government to intrude where it does not belong?  Eventually family values would be erased from our society.  Then, all of us would be impoverished.

[Coleus]

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[elkfersupper]

No contest.

In this day, the State decides, hands-down.

A problem that most of our fellow citizens are unable to identify.

[ClearCase_guy]

This has been debated here quite a number of times. Sadly, I find many freepers think that the State should have final say.

The tragedy of a sick child dying a needless death, because they refuse reliable treatment, should not be minimized. But somehow, people do not see the tragedy of 300 million people suddenly living in a society where the government decides who should (and who should not) get medical care.

This is not for government to decide.

Let the individual, and the individual's family, make the choice. Even if that choice seems "wrong", it is still better than paving the road toward government control of all medical decisions.

[Comparative Advantage]

Yep, without question, parents just have the privilage of parenting their children in this day and age. The state is the actual parents.

[Cicero]

999 times out of a thousand, I’d vote for the family. But not in this case. The kid has Hodgkins (something I’ve been through myself). It is eminently curable if it is treated in time, and it is nearly a hundred percent deadly if it is ignorned. Moreover, every month that you wait makes it more serious, and lowers the odds of successful treatment.

This woman is a nutcase, and she is going to kill her kid if no one intervenes.

As I said, I would never say this in most situations, but this one seems to be unusually clear cut.

[IronJack]

The State was concerned about the boy’s health and life.

"The State" is not a "who." It is a "what." A thing. "The State" cannot be concerned about anything. People within its machinery can. Certain bureaucrats can, for interests I'll leave to your imagination. But the faceless collective known as "The State" is not an entity capable of human emotion.

So were the parents.

"So" implies "in addition." As I've pointed out, the parents and "The State" were not competing. The latter has no emotional capability, so on questions of concern, the parents are the only entry.

[Big_Monkey]

"A problem that most of our fellow citizens are unable to identify. "

I must say that I understand it, and I'm torn about it. While I think that you, as an individual have every right to pursue whatever wacky therapies you can think of for your own treatment, I'm not necessarily sold that it's your right to endanger your child to satisfy your own bizarre beliefs. It's certainly a constitutional issue. Where does your 1st Amendment right end and your child's right to life begin?

This is a tough decision for the court, and I'm sure no one was relishing the idea of removing this sick child from the care of their parent.

As I said, I'm torn and could probably make equally persuasive arguments for both sides.

[Balding_Eagle]

The State wins. That’s a ‘cure’ that a 100,000,000 times more dangerous than the disease.

Just check the out death count for the last century.

[ClearCase_guy]

I'm not necessarily sold that it's your right to endanger your child to satisfy your own bizarre beliefs. It's certainly a constitutional issue.

I believe it's covered in the Constitution under the: "It takes a village to raise a child" clause.

[Big_Monkey]

"I believe it's covered in the Constitution under the: "It takes a village to raise a child" clause. "

A terribly flippant answer for a serious question. Again, where does the parent's 1st Amendment's right end, and the boy's right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness begin?

[pbmaltzman]

The parents were actually in contact with a man who had cured the same type of lymphoma, in himself, with an alternative treatment.

There are other things out there which will work on cancer, other than what conventional medicine offers.

I know that doctors don't like to hear it, but other, less brutal, treatments exist, and this kid and his family should have been able to undergo the treatment of their choice.

It is claimed that conventional treatments such as chemotherapy are "very reliable" for this kid's type of cancer, but he was finding the side effects of the chemotherapy to be intolerable.

When I was a kid, I saw what a family member (related by marriage, not by blood, but a lot of blood relatives had cancer too) went through after he was diagnosed with laryngeal cancer.

I swore up and down to myself that if the time ever came, I would do something other than what he did (surgery and radiation).

And I will. No conventional medicine for me if I am ever found to have cancer.

Once I got out on my own, I started reading about alternative medicine. I am convinced that it works a lot of the time. It is certainly less brutal than conventional treatment.

Now, were I to break my leg, then I would opt for conventional treatment, because it does work well.

Whose life is it anyway?

[ClearCase_guy]

where does the parent's 1st Amendment's right end, and the boy's right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness begin?

For this particular case, I believe that the parents did not want to pursue the treatment, and the child did not want to pursue the treatment. So they were united in their position on "the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness". It was the state that was insisting that their "opinions" on these matters were trumped by the awesome power of the Nanny State.

[Big_Monkey]

"The parents were actually in contact with a man who had claimed that he cured the same type of lymphoma," Fixed it.

[Quix]

Let me check . . . I know what the globalists think . . . [END TIMES "C" LIST PING]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2130557/posts?page=81#81

1949
Towards World Understanding, vol. V, is published by UNESCO, and in this volume one reads:

"As long as the child breathes the poisoned air of nationalism, education in world-mindedness can produce only rather precarious results....

For the moment, it is sufficient to note that it is most frequently in the family that the children are infected with nationalism by hearing what is national extolled and what is foreign disparaged....The activity of the school cannot bring about the desired result unless, repudiating every form of nationalism..."

1928
A book entitled The Open Conspiracy: Blue Prints for a World Revolution by socialist H. G. Wells is published.

He declares that "..The political world of the Open Conspiracy must weaken, efface, incorporate and supersede existing governments....The Open Conspiracy is the natural inheritor of socialist and communist enthusiasms, it may be in control of Moscow before it is in control of New York...."

1953
The Impact of Science on Society by Fabian Socialist Bertrand Russell is published in which he declares: " I think the subject which will be of most importance politically is mass psychology....Various results will soon be arrived at: that the influence of home is obstructive....although this science will be diligently studied, it will be rigidly confined to the governing class. The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for a generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen....Educational propaganda, with government help, could achieve this result in a generation. There are, however, two powerful forces opposed to such a policy: one is religion; the other is nationalism....A scientific world society cannot be stable unless there is a world government.

1967 - March 26: Pope Paul VI writes Populorum Progressio and states: "Who can fail to see the need and importance of thus gradually coming to the establishment of a world authority capable of taking effective action on the juridical and political planes? Delegates to international organizations, public officials, gentlemen of the press, teachers and educators--all of you must realize that you have your part to play in the construction of a new world order.

President Bush (SR) quotes on new world order and United nations:
.
"Time and again in this century, the political map of the world was transformed. And in each instance, a new world order came about through the advent of a new tyrant or the outbreak of a bloody global war, or its end." Feb 28, 1990---this quote is six months before Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August.

1940
A book entitled, The New World Order by H.G. Wells, in which Wells claims:

"It is the system of nationalist individualism that has to go....We are living in the end of the sovereign states....In the great struggle to evoke a Westernized World Socialism, contemporary governments may vanish....Countless people...will hate the new world order....and will die protesting against it."

1948 - UNESCO: Its Purpose and Its Philosophy by Fabian Socialist Sir Julian Huxley is published

in which he proclaims that UNESCO "...In its education program it can stress the ultimate need for world political unity and familiarize all peoples with the implications of the transfer of full sovereignty from separate nations to a world organization..."

1994 - the McAlvany Intelligence Advisor March 19**95 quotes Vladimir Zhirinovsky on Nov 9 at a press conference at the U.N. said, "There has long been a hidden agenda to merge America and Russia under the New World Order."

1995 - July/August: In the CFR's Foreign Affairs, prominent CFR member Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. exclaims: "We are not going to achieve a new world order without paying for it in blood as well as in words and money."

1996
. . . It was a terrible shock (to those of us who supported Bill Clinton) when Clinton came in and GATT and NAFTA became the centerpieces of his policy....And in a sense, there was almost a seamless transition from President Bush to President Clinton in that regard....Our democracy has been rendered meaningless by big money. The truth is there are politicians (who) are owned lock, stock and barrel by the big money interests....Our elections create, to some extent, a facade of choice."

1996 - October 23: On "The Charlie Rose Show" on the Public Broadcasting System, Mikhail Gorbachev states: "We are part of the Cosmos. Cosmos is my God. Nature is my God....The future society will be a totally new civilization which will synthesize the experience of Socialism and Capitalism...."

[Big_Monkey]

"For this particular case, I believe that the parents did not want to pursue the treatment, and the child did not want to pursue the treatment"

To take the argument to the next logical step, the inner cities are replete with minor students who don't wish to go to school, and their parents many times endorse or even promote such behavior. Does the state have an obligation to step in there?

[Dianna]

I would not want my kid to die of the cancer but I would not want him to suffer from the “cure” either. The “cure” is almost worse than the disease.

I've lost a teenaged son. I'd rather he suffered terribly for a year than be dead.

[combat_boots]

So sorry for your loss.