PURCELLVILLE, Virginia, December 1, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A U.S. pro-family organization is seeking to restrict what they argue is the government’s increasing interference with how parents raise their children by amending the nation’s constitution with a Parental Rights clause.
“Parental Rights are currently at risk from federal and international threats,” said Michael Farris, J.D., President of ParentalRights.org.
ParentalRights.org released a 36-minute docudrama on November 17th titled “Overruled: Government invasion of your Parental Rights,” featuring three reenactments of real cases where American parents lost their rights to parent their children as they saw fit.
In one case, parents were told by a physician that they could not get the results of a drug test on their 13-year-old son without their son’s permission. In another case a father was arrested after he sought to have his kindergarten-age son opted-out of classes that might address homosexual issues. And in the third case social works put a 13-year-old boy into foster care when he told a school counselor that he didn’t want to follow his parents’ wishes to go to church three times a week.
The producers called their film a “shocking” exposure on how parental rights across the country are being “eroded” by anti-family ideologies.
“The vast majority of Americans believe that Moms and Dads should be able to parent as they see fit: but what they don’t understand is that there is no legal right that allows them to do so,” says Rebecca Hagelin, an author and family advocate, in the film.
The film makes the case that parental rights are being trumped by court rulings and big government in three areas: medicine, education, and domestic life.
It warns in particular about the threat to parental rights if the U.S. moves to adopt the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).
The film’s producers argue that the UNCRC treaty empowers governmental agencies to determine what is “the best interest of the child,” not the child’s parents.
The producers point out that the treaty establishes a child’s right to “freedom of expression,” which includes the right to receive “information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of the child’s choice.”
“This treaty that purports to give rights to children, really makes children more vulnerable to being exploited and abused,” says Wendy Wright, former President of Concerned Women for America, in the film.
ParentalRights.org says it believes that the best way to protect the rights of parents over their child is to enshrine parents’ rights in the nation’s Constitution. They are campaigning to add three amendments:
1) “The liberty of parents to direct the upbringing and education of their children is a fundamental right.”
2) “Neither the United States nor any state shall infringe upon this right without demonstrating that its governmental interest as applied to the person is of the highest order and not otherwise served.”
3) “No treaty may be adopted nor shall any source of international law be employed to supersede, modify, interpret, or apply to the rights guaranteed by this article.”
Farris explains in the film that the first section means that “parents have the fundamental right to make decisions for their kid,” the second means that “if the government is going to try to invade your rights, they have to have clear evidence to do so,” and the third means “international law, stay out!”
Jonathan Horton, ParentalRights.org’s National Grassroots Director told LifeSiteNews that the response to the film from the vast majority of viewers has been very positive.
Horton said that so far their organization has collected over 250,000 signatures in support of their Parental Rights Amendment.
ParentalRights.org is asking all parents who value the rights to rear their children as they see fit to sign their petition so as to preserve and protect those rights in the Constitution.
Sign the petition here.
View video here