Wednesday, June 6, 2018

Parental Rights Deserve Eternal Vigilance: Arizona's SB 1473 Proves It

"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few." -Wendell Phillips
Eternal vigilance.  That means you have to keep your eyes on things, right?  For like, a really long time.  As an activist, eternal vigilance over our freedoms is something that comes to mind for me.  One of those freedoms is the right to parent a child the way that you, the parent, see fit.  Fighting for parental rights was actually my first foray into politics back in 2009.  It's a subject that I will always be passionate about.The gubmint don't always agree with that sentiment.  Take a look.

Recently an article on that topic came across my email and I thought it was worth sharing. Texas Public Policy Foundation puts out a daily email about stuff that's happening around the U.S., not just Texas or Harris County.  They published an email about a bill in Arizona about drug addicted babies being removed from their mother's care and their parental rights being terminated.  Now, that might sound logical to you, especially if the mother has proven the capability to harm her child.  As Paul Berlin would say, Now, for the rest of the story..."

The idea of the bill is to actually remove the provision that so many states have which is known as 'next of kin' or 'kinship' law.  The state of Arizona wants the default to be that the child be placed with total strangers, not with grandma or an aunt or uncle.  Say what?!?   
        "When children really must be taken from their parents, study after study has shown the children do better when placed with relatives than when placed with total strangers,” reports Richard Wexler in the Arizona Daily Star  and tucson.com“That’s why 45 states have a preference for kinship care in their state laws. SB 1473 would remove the kinship care preference in Arizona law and set up new barriers to relatives that create a subtle de facto preference for affluent strangers.”

I share this with you because no one's parental rights are ever free from the danger of being removed.  Think it can't happen to you?  Think again.  As I said in my opening quote: 
"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few." -Wendell Phillips

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