According to the 4th National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect, the family structure with the lowest rates of child abuse and neglect is by far two married biological parents. This data is from 2010. However, the most recent Child Maltreatment Report does not provide data on family structure in maltreatment cases that require intervention from child protection services and out-of-home placement. This hinders the ability to pursue evidence-based reforms that strengthen families and risk factors.
Idaho has an interest in establishing policy that encourages children to be raised in circumstances that are most likely to lead to their safety and happiness. Having better and more recent data would help child advocates and legislators bolster the case for pro-family and pro-marriage initiatives/reforms as a means of child protection.
The benefits of openness in adoption for all members of the adoption triad are recognized by adoption professionals and the adoption community; and Opening access to accurate information honors the rights of all individuals concerned, allowing them to make informed decisions rather than denying them access to the facts.
In recent years, radical gender ideology has rejected the immutability of biological sex—and this change of course threatens to destroy sex-based protections by obliterating the legal distinction between the sexes.
Men and women should be treated with equal respect, which includes protecting women’s opportunities, privacy, and dignity. Erasing distinctions between biological men and biological women threatens to undo these essential protections for women, including:
Ironically, this misguided push for the “equality” of men pretending to be women endangers the privacy and safety of real women.
A legal definition of male and female is also necessary for important government functions. For example, law enforcement officials often rely upon accurate government identification records like birth certificates and driver’s licenses. Similarly, public health officials need factual vital statistics to identify and analyze health disparities between biological men and biological women.
Freedom of conscience is a defining characteristic of American freedom. Conscience is the final arbiter of right and wrong. Protections in the law that prevent the government from coercing individuals to act contrary to their conscience safeguard society at large against government abuse. This is particularly true of our medical and mental health professionals whose hippocratic oath is to “Do no harm.” Because they deal with complex circumstances that are often not black and white, they must be free to exercise professional and ethical judgment in their practices, retaining the fundamental right to decline to take actions that, in their moral or ethical judgment, will cause harm.
Contrary to popular claims that allowing providers to decline to provide services will result in a lack of care, protecting the right of providers to practice consistent with their conscience keeps professionals in the field which would otherwise leave. Freedom, not coercion, is the most and only reliable way to ensure a robust healthcare economy on all fronts.
Idaho law contains provisions intended to protect children from pornography and other harmful content in the public domain. Unfortunately, the internet has made it far more difficult to protect children from predators and those who are able to do real harm to them in ways that would never be tolerated in person.
In addition, these laws contain exemptions for public schools and community libraries which have allowed these institutions to distribute material to minors which would never be tolerated in other settings. According to a report released last year by Idaho Family Policy Center more than fifty Idaho communities provide pornographic material to minor children,
Social researchers have long known that pornographic material harms developing brains and can contribute to:
Making matters worse, students routinely use school-owned devices that lack content filters to protect them from pornographic materials. This explains why more than 41% of teens report watching porn during school, with many students using school-owned devices to access the pornographic content, according to a recent national survey conducted by Common Sense.
Recent changes to state law have attempted to address these issues in the context of schools and libraries. Parents and others should continue to pay attention to this concern as we evaluate whether the changes that have been made are adequate.
Idaho law declares that parents possess a high duty and right to nurture and direct their children’s destiny, including their upbringing and education. This includes the right to direct medical or health-related care that may be provided.
Yet, nationwide, nearly 6,000 schools have enacted policies requiring school officials to conceal information from parents when their children begin identifying as the other gender at school, according to Parents Defending Education.
Unfortunately, this trend hasn’t spared Idaho. In Coeur d’Alene, a ten-year-old girl was told she was a boy by school officials, who encouraged her to socially transition and instructed her on how to hide her new lifestyle from her family.
Parents, not school employees, bear the ultimate responsibility for talking with their children about sexuality and addressing concerns children might have in regard to their sexuality.
On a separate front, parents also have a right to fully-informed consent in making decisions. A recent FOIA request by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights discovered, for example, that Idaho Medicaid is paying for approximately 1,150 Idaho children, age 0-5, to be treated with psychotropic drugs. Unfortunately, many of the parents of these children are not informed regarding the well-known potential side-effects of these drugs when they are prescribed. By federal law, FDA medication guides are available which provide this information. Requiring fully informed consent by providing these medication guides to parents or guardians as a pre-condition to receiving Medicaid coverage for these drugs is ethical and would better protect parental rights.
At the moment of fertilization, a new living human is created that meets all scientific requirements of life. Every human being is valuable and deserving of rights, regardless of their size, development, age, or whether they are desired by their parents.
Unfortunately, the practice of abortion ends life in the womb by using methods that include:
Through the Defense of Life Act and Heartbeat law, Idaho currently provides legal protections for most preborn children. The law provides exceptions for cases of rape, incest, and when the life of the mother is endangered.
Life of the mother exceptions set a low legal bar using the language “good faith medical judgment,” allowing medical personnel to exercise ample discretion in determining when to terminate a pregnancy in order to protect the life of the mother. Even with this, many in the left-leaning media (which would love to dismantle Idaho’s protection for preborn children) are spinning exaggerated narratives claiming that mothers’ lives are being jeopardized by an inability on the part of physicians to terminate pregnancy early. In light of the latitude given to doctors, the reality that the vast majority of complications present during the last trimester of pregnancy, and the fact that the early delivery and care of a viable baby is NOT abortion, most of these stories are easily shown to be carefully-calculated but shallow scare tactics.
