Parents have the duty to care for their children's well being until they are old enough to take care of themselves, which means having the ability and maturity to make their own decisions.
I think parents in the US assume that they have this control and right (derived from the duty) but maybe they are unaware that the administrative state (the various bureaucrats in departments of health, in conjunction with insurance companies) have taken their sovereignty away.
Do you assume that you will know and have the right to make decisions about your teen's health care in general? Here is a representative letter sent to parents in MN, but it could be about your child, wherever you are:
Only if you have had the forethought to get your child to consent to give you access, will you actually have it. But it's very strange. Think about it. If he's a minor and by definition not able to give informed consent (the whole reason he has parents or legal guardian), how is he giving you consent?
More to the point, what authority besides the parent (or legal guardian) is interposed here? What is its nature? It is simply... the administrative state, ready to step in if you have overlooked this important step of obtaining access... from a person not legally able to give it.
If you haven't obtained this access, and your child has to go to the hospital, let's say, you could be boxed out of calling the shots on his care. I think that because most children are basically healthy and most high-functioning parents will not be impeded, we are unaware of this lurking danger. Certainly parents in difficult situations or without a certain kind of education or status are at risk for losing their God-given rights over their child.
And the potential for the administrative state to take over the child's medical freedom under the guise of privacy is there. For instance, many states have legislation pending to remove the "immunizations" language you see here in the Minnesota example.
The mental gymnastics you have to jump through to write these policies is astounding. In our military hospital you cannot access your teen/tween’s medical records but also, your teen/tweens are not allowed to enter the hospital to access their doctors without you, the adult, being present 🤔
ReplyDeleteI think we have to grasp that they represent "depth charges" -- planted to go off when needed.
DeleteAnd when would they be needed, from the state's point of view? When you object to a treatment or refuse something they want to impose. I also think that the growing "underclass" is part of it too. Children of immigrants, children of single mothers who are too distracted by life's necessities to pay attention -- and that is why I say that the educated and self-protected class won't really notice until it's too late.
We didn’t notice until a friend needed to access her son’s account and couldn’t. We assumed the policy was meant to allow kids to access birth control without parental knowledge/consent, which again is silly because children aren’t allowed to pick up prescriptions, yet anyway. I completely agree with you that the point of this is to undermine parents.
DeleteThese laws and regulations enter as the trojan horse of "protect children who are being neglected or abused" and morph into "some children need privacy from their parents" until they become "the state has total control."
DeleteBut there will always be some defect -- we can never be perfect. We have to default to "parents are the rightful guardians" because the state (really, the bureaucracy) will never have the child's interest at heart.
If there really is abuse, there has been recourse to the courts and that is how it should be.
My husband recently completed medical school and is a Family Medicine resident. Speaking from his experience, young doctors are taught not to trust the parents, and to ask the parents to step out of the room for children as young as 12 to ask them about sexual habits and drug use. Physicians are being taught to ask children (yes, they really are children) if they are having sexual intercourse with members of the same or opposite sex without parental knowledge or consent. I can only imagine the fury I would feel if my twelve year old was introduced to the idea of homosexuality by our family physician. Parents need to wake up and protect their God-given rights over their children.
ReplyDeleteYes, pediatricians have adopted the stance that parents are the problem (and I think they may not think this themselves, but it's part of the larger bureaucracy that manages their practice).
DeleteWhat's scary is that we've gone from "no I'm not leaving the room" to "you don't have any say, legally."
Shortly after her 18th birthday our daughter ended up in the emergency room and was admitted to the hospital. Because of covid, we were not allowed to accompany her or visit her. She was asked to make multiple decisions about medical tests, medications, etc which she had no idea how to decide on. Fortunately, she had a cell phone and would call us when the Dr came in and when she had to make decisions to get advice. Otherwise we would have been totally shut out. But of course, they expect us to pay for it all.
ReplyDeleteI vividly remember being asked to consent to things while pumped full of morphine and basically dying. Obviously you need someone competent there if possible!
DeleteI was an adult.
How is it for a child? Covid insanity, state usurpation insanity.