There is a growing effort by parents to reclaim their rights. The war on parental rights includes medical decision-making, religious beliefs, education, and even matters related to privacy. Radical progressives seek to undermine parental rights, regardless of the potential impact on children.  Parental rights are deeply intertwined with the structure of the traditional nuclear family and their children. The erosion of parental rights ultimately leads to the destruction of the nuclear family.

Let’s hone in on how radical progressives are undermining parental rights:

Medical Decision Making
Parents often feel marginalized or disregarded in medical decision-making  processes for their children.  They worry their rights to make informed choices will be overridden by medical professionals or governmental bodies.  This happens when big brother decides to intervene when it comes to vaccines, receiving contraceptives, treatment of chronic conditions or mental health interventions, or any other medical decision that big brother feels affects the child. 

Gender Transitioning and Affirming Care
We observe instances where minors seek to undergo “gender transition” even when their parents oppose this detrimental path.  Gender transition is allowed for teens without parental consent in Colorado, Oregon, Washington State.  Even in states without specific laws, minors can still engage the system to call out the parents as ‘emotionally abusive’ and use legal channels to pursue the gender transition or affirm them in their gender dysphoric state.

In Indiana, there was a notable case involving a 16-year-old boy with anorexia who sadly thought he was a girl. The Department of Child Services (DCS) became involved and separated the child from his parents. This high-profile case led the parents to sue the Indiana Department of Child Services. The devout Catholic parents firmly believed that God created their son as an immutable male and that his biological sex was in his best interest.

Regrettably, the case proceeded to the appellate court, where the parents continued to lose custody despite the court acknowledging their suitability as parents. Shockingly, the court ruled that the boy could be removed from his home and placed in foster care without receiving treatment for his gender dysphoria.

Recently, the Supreme Court dealt a devastating blow to parental rights by rejecting the parents’ appeal without providing any explanation. The Justices’ refusal to clarify their decision leaves unanswered questions. Was it because the boy is now 18 and emancipated, or did they consider the issue not “ripe” for review?

Abortion
According to the Guttmacher Institute,  it may come as a surprise that only 27 states require parental consent for a daughter to have an abortion. Indiana stands out as the sole state that mandates notarized consent. In nine states, parents receive only a notification when their daughter seeks an abortion, but no formal consent is necessary.

What does this mean for parents who aim to protect their daughters from impulsive decisions with lasting consequences? Unfortunately, parents will be deprived of being grandparents, and their child will endure lifelong trauma stemming from the choice to end her baby’s life.

Contraceptives
Now children can gain access to Plan B (morning after) pills to potentially abort their baby.  Many believe that these are contraceptives, but these are potential abortifacients.  Parents understandably harbor deep concerns about their children having access to Plan B pills.  For one,  Plan B pills can cause some serious side effects such as liver disorders, gallbladder disease, high blood pressure and blood clots in the heart, intestines and lungs.  They can cause serious health complications in women suffering from diabetes, heart diseases and migraine.  The use of Plan B pills raises the risk of an ectopic pregnancy. In such a pregnancy, the embryo gets lodged in the fallopian tubes rather than the womb. If a girl is using Plan B pills, the pregnancy can remain undetected. This is because the symptoms of ectopic pregnancy are similar to the side effects of the pills: nausea and abdominal pain. If the pregnancy remains undetected for a long time, it can prove to be fatal.  Easy access to the Plan B pill leads to an increase in promiscuity, Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs) and increased sexual violence against girls.  Parents should be engaged in these decisions because of the profound impact on the child’s social, emotional, spiritual, and physical wellbeing.
 
Religious Beliefs

Sex Ed and LGBTQ Indoctrination
Parents, driven by their Christian beliefs, seek to exercise their opt-out rights to ensure their children are not exposed to gender/LGBTQ and sexuality curriculum. However, in some states, parents’ ability to opt out their children from these curricula is not available. In many cases, the curriculum force students to read and discuss books that promote gender transition, utilize pronoun preferences for children, expose them to drag queens, and dialogue on intersexuality.

This accompanying graph provides an overview of each state’s stance on child protection and highlights how few states actually require parental notification regarding these harmful topics.

When did schools become indoctrination camps for radical ideological orthodoxy?

Porn in the Libraries
There has been irreversible damage done to children due to sexually explicit books remaining on library shelves, both in public libraries and school libraries. What is appalling is that motivated and concerned parents have to obtain this material and read aloud the filth before school boards and library associations to draw attention to the level of obscenity lurking on the shelves in children’s sections of libraries. Despite the expectation that school board and library association officials would be dismayed by the pornographic content, these progressive officials ignore the pleas of parents and continue to carry this smut on the shelves, making it available for the next unsuspecting child to check out.

In their woke minds, school and library officials believe that children should be able to “identify” with homosexual kids who have sex together or a girl who is brutally raped by a boy.  I encourage them to pick up the book “Perfectly Normal” from an elementary school shelf and compare it to a classic like “Huckleberry Finn”, conducting a comparative analysis of the merits of each. Unfortunately, parents’ voices have been muted in this matter. Even worse, the National School Boards Association (NSBA), in coordination with the White House and the Department of Justice (DOJ), accused parents of domestic terrorism for speaking up at school board meetings.

Privacy
Throughout the country, parents have discovered that children have been exposed to invasive surveys at school unbeknownst to their parents.  Panorama has been one of the leading organizations in facilitating these surveys.

The surveys have captured information like:

• political affiliations or beliefs of the student or the student’s parent
• mental or psychological problems of the student or the student’s family
• sex behavior or attitudes
• illegal, anti-social, self-incriminating, or demeaning behavior
• critical appraisals of other individuals with whom respondents have close family relationships
• legally recognized privileged or analogous relationships, such as those of lawyers, physicians, and ministers
•  religious practices, affiliations, or beliefs of the student or student’s parent(s)
•  income (other than that required by law to determine eligibility for participation in a program or for receiving financial assistance under such program). 

From Parents Defending Education they state:

“The best way to determine if you would like to exercise your rights under federal law to opt your child out of certain types of surveys is to review the survey BEFORE it is given to your child—which you also have a right to do under the PPRA. You can set up a time with the school to review the survey and decide if you think it has value or is appropriate for your child.

Schools often send an email about an upcoming survey with very little notice—sometimes it’s barely 24 hours notice. This practice does not allow sufficient time for a parent to review the survey to decide if they prefer to opt out their child.”

CUP has specific knowledge that sometimes these surveys are conducted at school without parental knowledge and without any advance email notification to parents. We strongly encourage parents to utilize a blanket opt-out option for all surveys with their child’s school to avoid navigating this privacy minefield.

Organizations Defending Parental Rights
Moms for Liberty is a growing organization that seeks to influence educational policies and reclaim parental rights.  There are chapters in nearly every state with over 115,000 members.  Parents Defending Education also plays a significant role in addressing parental rights within education. 

Unfortunately, the legal route is sometimes needed to defend parent rights.  Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) litigates precedent-setting cases to protect parents and help shape and defend public policy that enshrines parents’ rights as fundamental. ADF key areas of focus:

• Public School Curricula: Challenging harmful views of human sexuality and race indoctrinated in schools.
• Medical Decision-making: Defending parents’ rights to make medical decisions for their children.

The Destruction of the Nuclear Family
We are aware that in 2020, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) organization expressed a desire to ‘disrupt the Western nuclear family’ as one of its primary goals. This sentiment was part of their mission statement, which also aimed to dismantle patriarchal practices that apparently ‘burden mothers’ and to ‘foster a queer-affirming network.’ The founders, trained Marxists’ pathway focuses on a socialist approach and fringe ideology that undermines natural and moral law.  When examining states that have curtailed parental rights, we find that many of these states tend to be predominantly blue states who adopt the philosophical approach of the founders of BLM. The critical question we must consider is whether BLM and these blue states have indeed succeeded in undermining the nuclear family. In my view, the answer is affirmative

Various institutions, including government, the healthcare system, educational systems, libraries, and the judicial system, have significantly hindered the following aspects of the nuclear family:

1. Parental Autonomy: Parents’ ability to raise their children according to their Christian beliefs has been compromised, leaving them feeling powerless and eroding family dynamics.
2. Child Development: The negative impact on a child’s development has made it harder for parents to provide essential support as their child grows, leading to family instability.
3. Social Structure: The diminishing role of the nuclear family in socialization, education, and nurturing has weakened the overall social structure. Traditional families serve as the bedrock of society, and this erosion affects us all.
4. Parental Rights: The shift toward a community-based approach to child-rearing, emphasizing public, community, and government support, has altered the balance of parental rights.

This pernicious ideology, propagated by wokeists, aims to dismantle the entire institution of the nuclear family.  Their ultimate goal is to disintegrate this foundational structure.

Final Battle for Marriage and Family

St. John Paul II had commissioned a plan to establish the Pontifical Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family.  Cardinal Caffarra as part of his research wrote to Sr. Lucia (visionary, Our Lady of Fatima) asking for prayers in this endeavor and she wrote back to him.

In that letter we find written: “The final battle between the Lord and the kingdom of Satan will be about Marriage and the Family.’ Don’t be afraid, she added, because whoever works for the sanctity of Marriage and the Family will always be fought against and opposed in every way, because this is the decisive issue. Then she concluded: ‘nevertheless, Our Lady has already crushed his head”

Let us seek the intercession of the Holy Family and specifically Our Lady of Fatima to protect the family in all circumstances.