A Violation of the Rights of the Parent
“We can do this the
easy way or the hard way. But it’s got
to get done.” -- State Attorney Glenn
Ivey of Prince George’s County, Maryland, on the vaccination
of 2300 children whose parents object to the county’s policy of forced
immunizations.
According to an article published by the Washington Post (Get Kids Vaccinated or Else, Parents Told), parents in Prince George’s
County, Maryland,
have been provided with an ultimatum by the state: let us inject your children
or go to jail. This is the message
delivered by Maryland State Attorney Glenn Ivey and the Prince
George’s County
School Board in their
quest to immunize 2,300 children whose parents have chosen not to submit to the
paternalistic demands of the state.
As the school system's chief of student services Betty
Despenza-Green puts it, "It hurts us when any child is out of school
because he needs to be immunized, and so we felt we needed to be creative. We
need those students immunized. We need them in schools."
It would appear as though the school system has quite a few
needs, including the need to strip parents of their right to make decisions about
their own children.
But the overbearing comments would not end there,
as school board chairman R. Owen Johnson Jr. would add "This is an
educational crisis. This is a public
health and a children's rights issue."
Additionally, in a letter to the non-conforming parents, State
Attorney Ivey noted that "unexcused absences by your child may subject you
to a criminal charge."
What an astonishing trio of statements. Green appears to imply that the Prince George’s School
Board’s need to protect their system of compulsory education supersedes a parent’s
right to rear their own children.
And Johnson’s statement, even more outrageously, asserts that it
is not the job of the parent to make decisions for their child, but rather it is the job of the government. This is an issue discussed by
Murray Rothbard in his brilliant essay, Education:
Free and Compulsory.
“It is obvious that the natural state of affairs is for the
parents to have charge of the child. The
parents are the literal producers of the child, and the child is in the most
intimate relationship to them that any people can be to one another. The parents have ties of family affection to
the child. The parents are interested in
the child as an individual, and are the most likely to be interested and
familiar with his requirements and personality.
Finally, if one believes at all in a free society, where each one owns
himself and his own products, it is obvious that his own child, one of his most
precious products, also comes under his charge.
“The only
logical alternative to parental “ownership” of the child is for the state to seize
the infant from the parents and to rear it completely itself. To any believer in freedom this must seem a
monstrous step indeed. In the first
place, the rights of the parents are completely violated, their own loving
product seized from them to be subjected to the will of strangers. In the second place, the rights of the child
are violated, for he grows up in subjection to the unloving hands of the State,
with little regard for his individual personality."
What we have in the case of Prince George’s County is the latter. The state has effectively told these parents that thier childen must go to school and they must be
vaccinated or they will be subjected to the force of the state. Essentially this means that any rights parents might enjoy regarding the rearing of their children are subject to the discretion of the state.
The State, it would appear, now owns America's children.