The
American Civil Liberties Union
is battling
parental consent laws
across the country, arguing that children should be able to make
major medical decisions
without parental involvement.
“If the ACLU is successful, parents will no longer have a role in their children’s lives on the most sensitive and critical topics a child may confront on critical matters including abortion and genital-mutilating surgeries,” Heritage Action for America Executive Director Jessica Anderson told the Washington Examiner.
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The battle to emancipate minors from their parents is playing out in Ohio right now, with an
ACLU-backed constitutional amendment
many in the state believe is written so broadly that it would allow children of any age to obtain abortions and genital mutilation surgeries without parental consent or knowledge, as well as open the opportunity for courts to interpret the language extremely permissively.
“There should be no doubt that this war on the nuclear family that the ACLU and its radical far-left allies have declared on the American people is intentional and part of a larger, coordinated plan,” Anderson said. “By challenging the very nature and significance of the parent-child relationship that is at the very core of civil society, the ACLU is declaring that there is almost no decision-making role for parents in the upbringing of their children.”
The
measure
states that “every individual has a right to make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions, including but not limited to decisions on contraception, fertility treatment, continuing one’s own pregnancy, miscarriage care, and abortion.”
While supporters say the amendment only addresses abortion, critics argue that the lack of any age limitations and the broadness of “reproductive decisions, including but not limited to” is the ACLU trying to tee up court decisions ruling against parental oversight of their child’s medical and sexual decisions.
“When you pass a constitutional amendment, it doesn’t just automatically erase everything and start over,” ACLU of Ohio attorney Jessie Hill
said
. “But it would mean that laws that conflict with it cannot be enforced, should not be enforced.”
Heritage Action for America has launched a digital ad campaign to combat the ACLU’s advances in Ohio and inform Buckeye State voters of the ACLU’s anti-parent initiatives in their state and others.
The Oregon chapter of the ACLU is
trying something similar
, where a constitutional amendment would include rights to abortion, gay marriage, and transgender drugs and surgeries. That amendment also does not address parental rights or age limitations, and Republican legislators maintain that is to allow anyone to make medical decisions for themselves.
The ACLU has a long track record of challenging parental consent laws and fighting for children’s sexual autonomy, from consent to teaching about graphic sexual topics in schools.
The group is involved with lawsuits in
Missouri
and
Tennessee
to sue for children to get access to transgender drugs and surgeries. The group is also
joining
teachers unions in Wyoming to try to force young children to learn about sexual orientation and gender identity.
Similarly, the ACLU has
argued in favor
of allowing schools to transition children without parental knowledge or consent because consent “ignores the reality that some parents may not be supportive,” according to ACLU policy strategist Sean McCann.
In 2016 and 2017, the organization joined with abortion giant Planned Parenthood to argue against parental consent laws in
Alaska
and
Indiana
, saying they put an “unconstitutional undue burden on unemancipated minors.”
The nationwide push is much more about sexual liberation for children than just parental consent, American Principles Project President Terry Schilling told the Washington Examiner.
“They want to liberate children sexually,” he said. “They say children are sexual from birth, and they actually think that pedophilia laws and age-of-consent laws are oppression.”
Broadly worded amendments like the ones in Ohio and Oregon open the opportunity for children to consent to sexual activity, not just sex-related medical decisions, Schilling warned.
“They teach children in schools how to have sex; they teach children how to get sex changes,” he said. “You’re telling me the party that’s pushing these amendments and saying that children can consent to sex changes doesn’t think they can consent to sexual activity? What’s the difference?”
“These amendments are pedophilia amendments,” Schilling continued, pointing out that laws and constitutional amendments in America have been “reinterpreted” countless times to create rights that were not part of the original law.
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“If the Supreme Court could use the 14th Amendment — an anti-slavery amendment, which was written in the 1860s — to legalize gay marriage, they can use these amendments to legalize pedophilia and reinterpret it,” he said. “It might not be immediate, but it will be soon.”
The ACLU did not respond to a request for comment from the Washington Examiner.
