Oregon Leftists Push for Government Surveillance Of All Newborns

[DavieD55]

Oregon Could Become the First State to Require In-Home Surveillance of Newborn Babies


BY PAULA BOLYARDJANUARY 15, 2019

If Oregon Governor Kate Brown has her way, the Beaver State will become the first to require universal home visits for newborn children in the care of their own parents.
Senate Bill 526, introduced this month in the Oregon Legislative Assembly as part of Brown's budget, orders the Oregon Health Authority to "study home visiting by licensed health care providers." Lawmakers went so far as to declare that SB 526 is an "emergency" measure — one that requires a resolution by the end of the year. The intro to the bill, the language of which has not yet been crafted, reads:

The Oregon Health Authority shall study home visiting by licensed health care providers in this state. The authority shall submit findings and recommendations for legislation to an interim committee of the Legislative Assembly related to health care not later than December 31, 2019.

Moreover, the 18 sponsors of the bill claim that its passage is "necessary for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health and safety," and therefore "an emergency is declared to exist."

What's the big emergency? Apparently, the state of Oregon is concerned that some parents are raising their children without the watchful eye of Big Brother monitoring their every move — a big no-no in the view of the progressive left.

Patrick Allen, director of the Oregon Health Authority, told the Beaverton Valley Times that he's enthusiastic about the idea of universal inspections for newborns. "This isn't something for people in trouble. This is stuff all kids need. Stuff my kids needed," Allen said.

According to the Beaver Valley Times, "When the program is complete, every new parent — this includes adoptions — would receive a series of two or three visits by someone like a nurse or other health care practitioner. The visits could include basic health screenings for babies; hooking parents up with primary care physicians; linking them to other services; and coordinating the myriad childhood immunizations that babies need."

The program has been piloted in Lincoln County but has not been tried statewide.

Sen. Elizabeth Steiner Hayward (D-Beaverton), who sits on the powerful Ways and Means Committee that will hammer out the language of the legislation, has said that universal home visits are a priority for her.

And Oregon is not alone in the push for "universal" home visits. Washington Governor Jay Inslee tweeted earlier this month, "My budget would also offer universal home visits. This gives every new parent the opportunity to get a visit from a nurse during the first few weeks back home with their newborn to share important information and build confidence."

Governor Jay Inslee
✔@GovInslee


My budget would also offer universal home visits. This gives every new parent the opportunity to get a visit from a nurse during the first few weeks back home with their newborn to share important information and build confidence. #waleg


19
1:44 PM - Jan 15, 2019
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While it's not clear whether either of these programs would be mandatory, the use of the term "universal" suggests that they would. It's frightening to think about what would happen to parents who refuse such visits.

As someone who has been involved in the homeschooling movement for more than 20 years, I have seen many attempts to increase the oversight of children taught at home by requiring home visits by a teacher or social worker. The basic premise behind these attempted power grabs is that parents cannot be trusted with the care of their own children — that an agent of the state is the only one qualified to ensure that children are being properly cared for.

Without such surveillance, proponents argue, children are at risk for abuse and neglect, something they believe government agents can prevent, despite volumes of evidence to the contrary. In Oregon, in fact, children in the foster care system are abused at twice the national rate. One wonders how a state that can't handle the children currently in its care could possibly manage to surveil an additional 40,000 children per year, let alone pay for such a program (answer: it can't).

Anytime a state or locality has tried to draft legislation requiring home visits for homeschooled children, the immediate response has always been, "What are they going to do next, require inspections for children from birth until they enter school?" The answer to that, of course, is yes. That has been the plan all along. Universal preschool, universal health care, universal free lunches — the lot of it — is just a surreptitious way for the state to monitor its citizens and control their behavior by handing out freebies.

Government agents monitoring the homes of law-abiding parents who have not been accused of a crime without a warrant is an unconscionable violation not only of parental rights and individual liberty but also a trampling of the Fourth Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Constitution.

The parental right to familial self-determination has long been the constitutional standard, dating back to Pierce v. Society of Sisters in 1923 when the Supreme Court threw out an Oregon law requiring all children to attend public school. "The fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments in this Union repose excludes any general power of the State to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only," the justices wrote. "The child is not the mere creature of the State; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations." [Emphasis added]

The idea of universal child inspections flies in the face of the ruling that the child is not a "creature of the state" and instead attempts to replace the parents' judgment with that of the state.

Parental rights groups have warned about the erosion of this precedent in recent years after a 2000 Supreme Court ruling (Troxel v. Granville) that opened the door for states and individual judges to apply their own rules. ParentalRights.org explained that on the one hand, the ruling seemed to affirm parental rights. The Court ruled:

The liberty interest at issue in this case — the interest of parents in the care, custody, and control of their children — is perhaps the oldest of the fundamental liberty interests recognized by this Court.In light of this extensive precedent, it cannot now be doubted that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protects the fundamental right of parents to make decisions concerning the care, custody, and control of their children.

At the same time, the group explained, the ruling "vacated the earlier strict scrutiny test that required proof of harm before the government could interfere with parental rights, instead granting to judges the power to balance parental rights on a case-by-case basis."

Oregon and Washington are testing these muddied legal waters, hoping to take advantage of the vague language to get their hooks into children just days after they exit the womb.

While some European countries and a host of international treaties and agreements use the "best interest of the child" standard to make all kinds of decisions about children, the U.S. rarely uses that standard except during child custody proceedings where there are two legal parents who disagree about how the child should be raised and where he should live. In the U.S. the de facto assumption is that — absent evidence of abuse or neglect — parents are responsible for determining the best interest of their own children.

No state agent could ever be an adequate substitute for a loving parent, but clearly, not everyone agrees. Proponents of home surveillance cite child abuse statistics and highlight horrific cases of neglect and abuse, glossing over the fact that most of these cases involve families who were known to law enforcement authorities and social services agencies that were unable to protect the children from their abusers.

The bottom line is that the statists pushing these policies do not trust us with our own children. It's not enough for them to have their hooks in them 180 days a year, feeding them propaganda from the first day of kindergarten through the end of high school. They now want access to them from the day they are born — and they will succeed if parents don't rise up and tell the government nannies to back off.


LINK TO ARTICLE

[Irving]

How could this possibly be considered an emergency, when no one even knew this was a problem? Are the parents supposed to pay for these visits as well?

[Grant H.]

I really hate liberals.

And that's not a word I use lightly...

[Eric P]

It's an attempt to extinguish the far right. Babies will die from those adverse to government intervention.

[DavieD55]

When CPS Kidnaps Children for Money
Saturday, 06 December 2014 Written by Selwyn Duke

?If I have it my way, you?ll never see your mommy and daddy again.? These cruel words were reportedly uttered to eight-year-old Jaxon Adams by a Missouri doctor working closely with Child Protective Services. While we don?t know if this statement will prove prophetic, the fact is that some children will never see their parents again ? or, at least, not for a very long time ? because of CPS.

And it has been alleged that many of these youngsters are essentially kidnapped ? for money.

The New American reported Thursday on the plight of Cleave and Erica May Rengo, a young Washington State couple whose three children were, many say, seized from them unjustly. And far from being alone, the Rengos have now joined a legion of parents whose kids have been abducted by the state.

But these are all abused children, correct? Virtually always. There is a question, however, as to who their abusers are. Is it the parents?
Or the state? Or both?

This clearly varies on a case by case basis, but there is one constant of which many are unaware:

Every time CPS seizes a child, it gets money from the federal government. Lots of money.

And critics have warned that this has a corruptive effect. As New York Times best-selling author Dr. Joseph Mercola wrote in 2011:

[D]id you know that the money funneled to states and child protective services actually encourages them to accuse you of child abuse and even murder, and to take your children,even if you're not guilty, and even though they have absolutely no proof that you harmed your child?

Horrendous as it sounds, it's true: child abuse has become a business ? an industry of sorts ? that actually pays states to legally abduct your children and put them up for adoption!

Mercola then quotes a source informing about a California politician who pledged to expose this practice:

Most people are not aware of how much profit many of these services provide the county," John Van Doorn told a San Diego newspaper. ?These profits are hard to ignore and even more difficult to pass up.?

Counties can bring in thousands of dollars in excess revenue for each child in foster care, Van Doorn said ? which means they have more incentive to remove children from their families than to keep families intact. "As such ... our county government is a major factor in the dismantling of families and/or destruction of children's lives," he said.

No one has to tell this to Michael Minkoff, a father who alleges that his children were unjustly taken by CPS. Likening many American local governments to the Chinese regime ? which has been accused of stealing children to profit from selling them for adoption ? he levels a serious charge: CPS standards for seizing children aren?t just governed by whether they?re abused, but also whether they?re ?marketable.? He writes:

While we were in LA fighting to get our children back, a little black boy was beaten to death by his step-father. Neighbors had called CPS six times over the course of a few months. No one ever showed up.

Do you know how many calls it took for someone to show up and take our beautiful white baby twin girls? One call. And CPS took them on the basis of one person?s testimony. And we were assumed guilty from the start. Three months later, the case was dismissed and not a single claim was upheld, yet LA County got three months worth of Federal money out of our kids, and so far, they got it with impunity. In fact, if it hadn?t been for God?s grace and good lawyers, we might have been fighting for much longer to no avail.

While we can?t know if profit was the motivation in the earlier-mentioned Rengo children?s seizure, they certainly fit the profile of ?adoptable? kids. They?re white, young (all under a year old), seem attractive and, except for some eczema suffered by the eldest, are apparently healthy.

And many would say Cleave and Erica May Rengo fit the profile of persecuted parents. Having home-birthed their last two children, being believing Christians, and preferring alternative medicine to the conventional variety, they likely wouldn?t have been in favor with notoriously liberal CPS social workers. And part of the justification for seizing their kids also raises suspicion: CPS viewed as neglect the Rengos? refusal to treat their eldest child?s eczema with steroidal medication. Eczema is a skin condition that can cause itching but is not life-threatening, and the parents were treating it with natural remedies.

In contrast to the Rengo children, eight-year-old Jaxon Adams has been a sickly little boy, having been diagnosed with epilepsy and a number of food allergies, among other things. According to Terri LaPoint at MedicalKidnap.com, however, these health issues paled in comparison to what the Adamses would suffer at the hands of Dr. Amber Hoffman of Children?s Mercy Hospital and her CPS allies.

After being told by hospital doctors that Jaxon?s problems were all psychosomatic, his parents wanted a second opinion.

They were told they were ?not allowed to do so,? reports LaPoint.


Furthermore, they were informed that they wouldn?t be allowed to change pediatricians, either.

The Adamses were being accused of abuse. To be precise, ?medical abuse, medical neglect, lack of nutrition, lack of supervision ... and psychological abuse,? wrote LaPoint. The lack of supervision charge was, LaPoint tells us, based on Jaxon?s falling off a scooter upon fainting and was issued even though his mother, Tiffany, was with him when the accident occurred.

LaPoint quotes a therapist who told Tiffany, after learning of the impending CPS child seizure, ?I cannot believe this. You guys are GOOD parents.? And of the day (Sept. 17) CPS showed up to take Jaxon, LaPoint writes, ?The investigator had tears in her eyes when she admitted that she did not want to take Jaxon, ?but they?re making me.? It came down to one statement, with no charges being filed, and CPS admitting that they had not reviewed the medical records. Dr. Hoffman had called CPS immediately after the meeting with the Adams[es] where they asked for a second opinion.?

But who were the real abusers? As LaPoint tells us about what transpired when Jaxon was taken to Children?s Mercy Hospital by CPS:

Dr. Hoffman came into the child?s room when he was crying his heart out missing his family. She told him to suck it up and stop crying. Her words that she told him were cruel beyond belief, as he later confided to his sister:

If I have it my way, you'll never see your mommy and daddy again.

Because Jaxon tried to call his parents, the staff took the phone out of his hospital room.

A couple of times, he got out of his room heading for the stairwell, in a vain attempt to escape.

There were signs on his door saying, ?Under CPS custody,? and ?Parents Not Allowed In.? As his mother says, ?He can read.?
And Jaxon?s and the Rengo children?s stories are just two of a multitude we can read at MedicalKidnap.com and elsewhere.

Of course, it?s said there are three sides to every story: his, hers, and the Truth. Moreover, a site such as MedicalKidnap.com obviously has a tacitly acknowledged bias (note that a ?bias? isn?t by definition negative), and logic dictates that not every parent claiming CPS overreach has clean hands. But what of the CPS?s bias? And is it reasonable to believe it?s untainted by money when there?s so much of it to be had? As former Oregon prosecutor Robert Weidner put it on a 2008 edition of the show ?On Second Thought?:

It?s a viper pit when you go into that courtroom.... And they pounce on you, and it?s all driven by money, all of the taking of the children that is going on right now.... They get $85,000 from the federal government every time they take one of those little ones and put them up for adoption. So everyone?s feeding off of this federal money that is coming in, and all they?re focused on is getting the money ? they talk about keeping their numbers up.

How many good parents have found their number was up because of this mercenary motivation?

LINK TO ARTICLE

[wctriumph]

It makes me sad for the families in the future that will needlessly be put through hell at the hands of the government.

I won't be bringing any more children into the world but my daughter may.

[Skip]

Do I need to post the "we have to get over the notion our children belong to us" video again?

Like I said in that other thread... If we give up our kids, just turn the guns in now because there's no point to anything else.

[Gman]

"It takes a village..."

Remember which party regurgitated that crap.

[BushMasterBoy]

I predict violence. Your prediction may differ.

[Zundfolge]

I predict violence. Your prediction may differ.

This. And I have no sympathy for any government employees that end up on the receiving end of it. If you continue to work for the government after they get this corrupt, you are tacitly endorsing their policies.