Will Everyone in the U.S. Soon Need Government Approval to be Parents and Keep Their Children?

Children belong to their parents. Such a concept is foundational to every culture throughout all of human history. The family is the core group of any society. The need of the child for his or her own parents is a need that impacts the child on every level: biologically, psychologically, emotionally, spiritually, developmentally, and culturally. In most circles, the truth of the above statements is accepted as common knowledge. However, there are some who do not hold to these most cherished values of family and kinship. Unfortunately, some of these people are radicals and extremists who hold positions of great influence over public policy, which translates into very real problems for families. Richard Wexler, Executive Director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, wrote of some radical views of the family by Elizabeth Bartholet, who is a Professor of Family Law at Harvard Law School: "Bartholet’s ideas are so extreme that they include requiring every family with a young child to open itself to mandatory government surveillance." Bartholet has worked with another radical whose views we have exposed here at Health Impact News, Professor James Dwyer of William and Mary College. Dwyer believes that there is no inherent right to parent one’s own children, and has stated: "The reason that parent-child relationship exists is because the state confers legal parenthood on people through its paternity and maternity laws." One of Dwyer's books was even the required text for a course on Family Law that Bartholet taught. If these law professors' radical views were isolated and contained to a few classes and lectures attended by a handful of elite college students, their views might be dismissed as irrelevant to most of us. However, both Dwyer and Bartholet appear to have a great deal of influence over public policy, and their views trickle down to the very people who have the power to make the equivalent of life-and-death decisions over families. These radical views that supplant parental rights in favor of government control of children are behind many of the Medical Kidnap stories we publish.