United Nations Pact Could Strip Away Parental Rights
United Nations Pact Could Strip Away Parental Rights
Selwyn Duke
09 February 2009
If the United States ratifies the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), parents could be prohibited from homeschooling, spanking or even choosing the religion of their child.
If you’ve ever had to deal with a child-protective-services agency in a more statist part of the country, it’s an experience you’ll never forget. Living where I do, for example, within the gravitational pull of Den of Iniquity #2 (NYC), I could relate some grapevine horror stories about social-worker home invasions that would make your head spin. And here is just one little anecdote: I had an acquaintance whose 13-year-old son was required to strip down for social workers so they could examine him after it was discovered he might have suffered a scratch while being restrained by a family member.
Now such lunacy could be visited on Americans nationwide if our government ratifies the social-engineering treaty of the CRC, a scheme that imposes frighteningly intrusive dictates. Writes Chelsea Schilling at World Net Daily:
The international treaty creates specific civil, economic, social, cultural and even economic rights for every child and states that "the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration." While the treaty states that parents or legal guardians "have primary responsibility for the upbringing and development of the child," Farris [president of ParentalRights.org Michael Farris] said government will ultimately determine whether parents' decisions are in their children's best interest. The treaty is monitored by the CRC, which conceivably has enforcement powers.
And the treaty is closer to becoming reality than you may think. After being created in the 1990s, the CRC was ratified by 193 nations worldwide and was actually signed in 1995 by then U.N. Ambassador Madeleine Albright. However, due to opposition by Senate conservatives, the U.S. was one of only two countries not to ratify it.
The CRC’s chances of passing muster today are far better, however, with devoted leftist Barack Obama in the White House and many more of his fellow travelers in the Senate. Doctrinaire internationalists, these individuals believe that virtue lies not in protecting culture and sovereignty but in being a thoroughly-amalgamated “citizen of the world.” Thus, we stand at a precipice, where we may approve what is a veritable declaration of war on parental authority. As to this, ParentalRights.org lists some of the treaty’s elements:
1. Parents would no longer be able to administer reasonable spankings to their children.
2. A murderer aged 17 years, 11 months and 29 days at the time of his crime could no longer be sentenced to life in prison.
3. Children would have the ability to choose their own religion while parents would only have the authority to give their children advice about religion.
4. The best interest of the child principle would give the government the ability to override every decision made by every parent if a government worker disagreed with the parent’s decision.
5. A child’s “right to be heard” would allow him (or her) to seek governmental review of every parental decision with which the child disagreed.
6. According to existing interpretation, it would be illegal for a nation to spend more on national defense than it does on children’s welfare.
7. Children would acquire a legally enforceable right to leisure.
8. Teaching children about Christianity in schools has been held to be out of compliance with the CRC.
9. Allowing parents to opt their children out of sex education has been held to be out of compliance with the CRC.
10. Children would have the right to reproductive health information and services, including abortions, without parental knowledge or consent.
Worse still is that the treaty is not an isolated legislative accident but part of a deep cultural malaise, one that is ever metastasizing and has been steadily eroding parental rights. As an example, consider the precedent set by a court in the Gatineau region of Canada. The case involved a divorced father (his name wasn’t released) who forbade his 12-year-old daughter from going on a school trip after she posted pictures of herself at an online dating site and got into a rancorous argument with her mother. The girl then sued her father as allowed under Canadian law – a right the CRC would bestow upon children the world over. The Globe and Mail tells us what happened next:
Madam Justice Suzanne Tessier of the Quebec Superior Court ruled on Friday that the father couldn't discipline his daughter by barring her from the school trip.
. . . Lucie Fortin, the lawyer representing the 12-year-old, said the judge found that depriving the girl of the school trip was an excessive punishment.
. . . "She's becoming a big girl. ... It's a unique event in her life," Ms. Fortin said.
Wow, since these compassionate lawyers care so much about the child, I wonder if they’d like to raise her.
This government intrusion is a malevolent attack upon the family. Yet it cannot be fully appreciated unless we understand the family as a nation unto itself, with a government (parents) and the governed (children).
The family has been called the “central building block of civilization.” For if this small government is healthy, there is no need for big government. Parents will tend to their responsibilities, and the children in turn will be transformed into moral beings who will fulfill theirs, exercise their free will properly and thus be good citizens who have no need of masters. But a prerequisite for this is that the family government must be able to ensure tranquility within its own borders.
This lends perspective. When big government trumps parental rights, it’s doing nothing less than inspiring the factions (children) within another government (the family) to revolt. It then plays the role of a hostile power fomenting unrest and destabilizing a society of blood kinship which, some would suspect, it means to destroy. And it should be treated just the same as any other foreign interloper with designs on the throne.
SOURCE:
http://www.jbs.org/index.php/news-feed-archive/4477
