Protect children by preserving parental rights

Petition

It Is Unconstitutional and Anti-American to Remove a Parent’s Right to Direct Healthcare Decisions for Our Children

The undersigned citizens of the United States respectfully request that state senators, state representatives and assembly people, and governors of the great states commit to affirming and upholding our medical, parental, and patient rights to make the decisions that affect the health and well-being of ourselves and our children.

The American Medical Association (AMA) voted in June 2019 to make it a mission to remove “the barrier” of “ refusing parents” to all children receiving all childhood vaccinations. It seeks to allow minor children as young as 12 years of age to provide their own consent in contravention of parental authority. Existing federal law—42 U.S. Code § 300aa–26—and Supreme Court precedent—Parham v. J.R. and Troxel v. Granville— makes parental rights paramount to all other interests. This same federal statute establishes a compensation program for vaccine injury and death, plus unprecedented liability protection for vaccine manufacturers and the health care professionals who administer vaccines, because there is sufficient risk and established harm caused by vaccinations to justify and necessitate such a program.

Mandatory childhood vaccinations are used for preventative purposes in healthy children, not for emergency medical necessity, so such laws removing parental rights do not pass the “compelling state interest” test required to lawfully restrict a fundamental freedom. Any law that limits basic human rights—such as parental rights and informed consent to medical intervention—must undergo rigorous scrutiny and be shown to be strictly necessary, more than legitimate or important, narrowly focused on the cause of the problem, and the least restrictive of all methods. In a declared emergency, vaccines temporarily administered under Emergency Use Authorization require complete, informed, and voluntary consent. The US Supreme court recently reaffirmed in Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo, 592 U.S. ___ (2020) that “even in a pandemic, the Constitution cannot be put away and forgotten,” and strict scrutiny will apply to laws curtailing constitutionally protected rights. It’s an overreach, and not strictly necessary, to remove parental knowledge and consent to all mandatory childhood vaccinations. The AMA is a professional association whose objective is to protect the interests of its member physicians. In the event of harm caused by healthcare decisions made in breach of parental authority, neither the AMA nor implicated physicians will be liable. The child’s parents will still be financially responsible (not to mention grievously disconsolate).

Parents, as the ultimate stakeholders, are the most invested in, and must continue to direct the decisions that determine, the child’s health and well-being. Removing parents from health decisions will jeopardize the child’s health and threaten the parent-child relationship and familial integrity. It is well established in natural, divine, and religious laws, and upheld in long-standing historical and cultural norms of the Western world that parents play the primary role in the upbringing and nurturance of our children. The alternative is medical authoritarianism and abhorrent to Americans. Please represent us and stand for the encompassing and inherent freedoms that define who we are.

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Stand to Protect Our Medical Parental Rights

Sign the petition to tell your state lawmakers that it is unconstitutional and anti-American to remove a parent’s right to make healthcare decisions for our children.

We stand for our medical, parental, and patient rights to direct the health and well-beng of ourselves and our children. The American Medical Association (AMA) does not. The AMA—one of the strongest lobbying organizations in America ^[1]—is on a mission to advance the rights of its member doctors to make health care decisions for minor children in contravention of parental authority. The AMA’s agenda is anti-parent, anti-patient, anti-liberty, and pro-medical authoritarianism. In June 2019, the AMA adopted a policy that declares the organization’s focus: press states to pass laws that remove the vaccine decision from parents and place it squarely in the hands of the “mature minor.”^[2] The AMA admits that its motivation is to specifically override the judgment and conviction of “refusinik parents.”^[3] Pediatricians administer the most vaccinations. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has publicly stated that it is its priority to override parental concerns.^[4] The AMA’s agenda and the AAP’s approach is anti parental rights and anti informed consent.

Existing federal law — the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 — specifically and legally requires parents be informed of vaccine information including risks and benefits prior to the distribution of each vaccine.^[5] This same law establishes a compensation program for vaccine injury and death because there is enough risk of harm caused by government-recommended vaccines to necessitate such a program. The choice to vaccinate must remain with parents who know their children’s medical and family history and details about cultural norms and other aspects of their health and upbringing better than anyone else. The Supreme Court affirmed the high responsibility and right of parents to control the upbringing of our children against that of the State in Prince vs Massachusetts (1944): the custody, care, and nurture of the child reside first in the parents, whose primary function and freedom include preparation for obligations the State can neither supply nor hinder.^[6]

Our children are the first generation that will not live to be as old as their parents.^[7] Chronic disease rates in America have skyrocketed from 12% in the 1980’s to over half of children today. The U.S. has the highest infant mortality rate of all developed countries. Of infants surviving the one year threshold, 54% of them are diagnosed with at least 1 of 20 chronic, autoimmune, or neurological disorders and are at risk of obesity and developmental delays. The same medical system that has overseen this decline in America’s health rates is the one that is on a fast mission to override parental authority to direct the health and well-being of our children. Will we entrust the health decisions of our children to the institutions that have overseen the greatest health decline in human history? It is time to stand up for divine, natural, religious, constitutional, and human rights laws that have guided us well and withstood the test of time.

The AMA, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the pharmaceutical industry and its lobbyists are not interested in protecting parental rights or your children’s health ^[8]. They are not advocating for keeping families together and your children in school. Their concerns are to shape and direct health care policy, public health (conceding its attendant and expected collateral damage), industry profitability, and physician interests. It is clear how and why their agenda is in conflict with US parents. Now is the time to stand and tell your elected officials that you are asking them to protect your rights: the primary role of parents in the upbringing of our children is an enduring tradition that is established beyond debate in the history and culture of Western civilization.^[9]

Sign the petition and stand for health freedom and the preservation of parental rights.

^[1] “Top Spenders” https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/; “Annual Lobbying by American Medical Association” https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000000068&year=2018

^[2] “Highlights from the 2019 AMA Annual Meeting” https://www.ama-assn.org/house-delegates/annual-meeting/highlights-2019-ama-annual-meeting

^[3] Id.

^[4] “Immunizations, Vaccine Hesitant Parents,” https://www.aap.org/en-us/advocacy-and-policy/aap-health-initiatives/immunizations/Pages/vaccine-hesitant-parents.aspx (accessed August 18, 2019).

^[5] 42 U.S. Code § 300aa–26.

^[6] Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U.S. 158 (1944).

^[7] A Potential Decline in Life Expectancy in the U.S. in the 21st Cent., N Engl J Med 2005; 352:1138-1145.

^[8] “The American Medical Association is a special-interest lobby, not a patient ally,”

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/the-american-medical-association-is-a-special-interest-lobby-not-a-patient-ally (June 27, 2017).

^[9] Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S.205, 232-233 (1972).

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