By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
Embattled Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) is pushing for ratification of a UN treaty that will grant children freedom of thought, conscience and religion while outlawing “unlawful” interference from their parents.
FoxNews.com is reporting that Senator Boxer, whose re-election bid is in trouble, wants the Senate to vote on ratification of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, a nearly 20 year-old international agreement that was signed by President Clinton in 1995 but never ratified. The convention established a Committee on the Rights of the Child, an 18-member panel in Geneva composed of “persons of high moral character” who review the rights of children in nations that are party to the convention.
At present, 193 countries have signed on to the controversial treaty except the U.S. and Somalia.
“Children deserve basic human rights … and the convention protects children’s rights by setting some standards here so that the most vulnerable people of society will be protected,” Boxer said.
However, legal experts say the convention will erode U.S. sovereignty because the Supremacy Clause in Article VI of the Constitution permits all such treaties to become “the supreme law of the land,” superseding preexisting state and federal statutes. Any rights or laws established by the U.N. convention could then be argued to hold sway in the United States.
“To the extent that an outside body, a group of unaccountable so-called experts in Switzerland have a say over how children in America should be raised, educated and disciplined — that is an erosion of American sovereignty,” said Steven Groves, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
The Committee has already been causing havoc for families around the world, such as in Germany where it was used to ban homeschooling. In Great Britain, a 16 year-old girl used it to force her parents to let her boyfriend move in and share her bedroom.
This treaty is a threat to families, said pediatrician Rosemary Stein of Burlington, North Carolina, spokesperson for the Christian Medical Association (CMA).
“It takes away the parents’ rights to rear their child and gives it to the government,” she told One News Now. “The government becomes the caretaker and the guardian, and the parent becomes the babysitter. Another way to define it would be ‘the government takeover of our children.'”
If the treaty is enforced, the government would have the right to intercede or even supersede parents if it is determined that their actions are not in the best interest of the child.
“I didn’t know that it was this insidious, and at the same time, this overwhelming,” Stein laments. “It goes over everything — what you teach them, what you do with them [and] how they’re reared.”
Parental rights groups are vehemently against ratification of the treaty, seeing it as gateway to allowing the government to meddle with even the simplest freedoms to raise children as their parents see fit.
“Whether you ground your kids for smoking marijuana, whether you take them to church, whether you let them go to junior prom, all of those things . . . will be the government’s decision,” Michael Farris, president of ParentalRights.org, told Fox News. “It will affect every parent who’s told their children to do the dishes.”
Meanwhile, 16 conservative lawmakers have agreed to co-sponsor Senate Res. 519 to oppose ratification of the treaty. Because it is not known when the Senate will try to ratify the treaty, concerned citizens are being urged to start contacting their senators to voice their views and urge them to support S. Res. 519.
For more information on the U.N. Convention for the Rights of the Child and how it will affect parental rights, visit http://www.parentalrights.org/
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