Parental rights are under increasing assault in our culture these days, particularly in the area of education, medicine and child welfare, which is why they will want to get behind newly reintroduced legislation aimed at amending the U.S. Constitution to protect the rights of parents to raise their children as they see fit.

The Office of Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) reintroduced a bill that would amend the Constitution to protect the rights of parents as they raise their children. The legislation focuses on education and empowers parents to be the final arbiters in how their child is raised.

The legislation is cosponsored by U.S. Senators Roy Blunt (R-MO), Johnny Isakson (R-GA), James Risch (R-ID), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), and Marco Rubio (R-FL).

“The rights of parents are under assault from bureaucrats who think they know what’s best for someone else’s child,” said Senator Graham. “Parental rights do not and should not end when the child leaves their home.”

In particular, the resolution certifies that:

• the liberty of parents to direct the upbringing, education, and care of their children is a fundamental right;

• the parental right to direct education includes the right to choose, as an alternative to public education, private, religious, or home schools, and the right to make reasonable choices within public schools for one’s child;

• neither the United States nor any State shall infringe these rights without demonstrating that its governmental interest as applied to the person is of the highest order and not otherwise served;

• the parental rights guaranteed by this article shall not be denied or abridged on account of disability;

• this article shall not be construed to apply to a parental action or decision that would end life; and

• 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.

“We are gratified to see this crucial amendment introduced in the U.S. Senate for the fifth straight Congress,” said ParentalRights.org President Jim Mason, a proponent of the resolution. “If the recent Charlie Gard tragedy in the UK showed us anything it is that children are better served when loving parents make the important decisions about their care.”

According to the organization’s research, parental rights have come under increasing assault by the state in cases involving children’s medical care. The cases of Justina Pelletier and Isaiah Rider in 2014 are good examples of what can go wrong when parents are shut out of important medical decisions regarding their children. In both cases, the children were essentially kidnapped by state-run child protection agencies simply because their parents disagreed with how doctors were treating their children.

In the area of education, horror stories abound about the dismissal of parental concerns about what is being taught to their children in the nation’s public schools. There have been numerous incidents in just the past few years of schools neglecting to get parental consent before introducing subjects such as gender ideology and same-sex marriage to youngsters. In Virginia, Governor Terry McAuliffe vetoed a bill that would have required schools to alert parents when a reading assignment will contain sexually explicit material. The governor decided that warning parents of the material would interfere too much in the education process.

When it comes to parental rights and child welfare, ParentalRights.org has determined that this area “continues to be a mess.” Even though the disintegration of the family has indeed made life difficult for some children, over-zealous state actors are increasingly prone to removing children from their homes when it is unwarranted. One case involved a mother who fled from an abusive partner and completed every requirement set before her for unification, but who lost her son anyway. The site lists numerous cases where courts have had to overturn unwarranted TPR’s (termination of parental rights) with one judge citing an “extraordinary troubling pattern of behavior” in this regard from Indiana’s Department of Child Services.

Family law attorney Allison Folmar of Detroit believes that the time has come to pay serious attention to the erosion of parental rights that has been occurring over the last few decades.

“The Parental Rights Amendment should absolutely have bipartisan support,” Folmar said. “And the consensus among the American people is that it does have that support. Now we’re looking to Congress to reflect that reality.”

Contact your senators today and ask them to support this important legislation!

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