All of us agree that children deserve to be well cared for and given every opportunity to meet their full potential.
So why would anyone oppose a law to create a children’s “Bill of Rights” that guarantees children have a right to quality housing, education, appropriate health care, a safe environment, and have their other basic needs met?
All of us agree that children deserve to be well cared for and given every opportunity to meet their full potential.
So why would anyone oppose a law to create a children’s “Bill of Rights” that guarantees children have a right to quality housing, education, appropriate health care, a safe environment, and have their other basic needs met?
Here’s why: I strongly disagree that government should be defining what is “quality” and “appropriate” and enforcing those standards. Giving government power over the sacred parent-child relationship discards our God-given parental rights to raise and provide for our own children as we see fit.
Senate Bill 18 would let government create standards for measuring “bad” parents that include, but are not limited to: medical care, nutrition, home life, and education requirements. All of these standards would be defined by politicians and enforced by bureaucrats. Thus, parents’ only option will be either to obey or risk being reported to Child Protective Services. If you want the freedom to raise your kids according to your beliefs and family traditions without the threat of state intervention, your only option will be to move out of California.
It’s not difficult to see the direction in which this could quickly go.
We saw first-hand with the legislation that removed the personal belief vaccine exemption that some legislators believe they know what is best for your children’s health regardless of what you think. We have also seen how hostile some legislators are to charter schools or homeschooling, and how negatively some look at faith based approaches to family counseling.
So why would we think that they would stop there? With the extensive framework of parental regulations created by SB 18 and its companion, Senate Concurrent Resolution 41, they’ve created a standard for every aspect of your child’s life. So if one of the legislators who is hostile to homeschooling is successful in defining public education as “quality” and home school as inferior, then your choice to homeschool would be a violation of your child’s rights and the state could intervene. With the super-majority party’s feelings about legal gun ownership, would they define a home “unsafe” if parents own a rifle or handgun?
There is limitless potential for how this could overreach in to ordinary people’s lives – people trying to raise their kids in the way they think is best. It is evident in the draft of the bill that it contemplates the state power to seize or restrict parents’ access to children that aren’t receiving what the state determines to be the correct “research-based essential needs” and “special care” from their parents or guardians.
This bill is dangerous because it does not consider the parents’ and guardians’ unique knowledge of their child’s individual needs.
Protecting” all children by replacing family decisions with the government’s preferred standard undercuts parental rights and threatens California families.
You can protect your child by protecting your parental rights. If you agree that you know what’s best for your kids, not the government, please consider signing my petition in opposition to SB 18 at bit.ly/NoSB18.
