The Danger of Children's Rights

The Next Great Scam

In Perelandra, CS Lewis’ reimagining of the Eden story, the silver-tongued Devil tries his darndest to get the novel’s innocent, trusting Eve stand-in to break God’s command. Satan wisely avoids disclosing his true motivation: that he will revel in her suffering and death. He devises instead righteous-sounding arguments to sway her; what the reader knows, but the trusting Eve-figure does not, is that each persuasive claim is in fact the opposite of the truth. So too, in Genesis, the serpent tells the real Eve that when she eats of the forbidden fruit, her “eyes will be opened” (Gen 3:5). Who doesn’t want their eyes opened? Sounds fantastic! You’re not anti-vision, are you? Yet the serpent’s is not a random lie, it is the exact inversion of the truth: eating the fruit guarantees that her eyes will one day close, never to open again.   

As in the Bible, as in our lives. Medicine is no exception. Take “reproductive healthcare.” You’re not some anti-reproduction prude, are you? And who would oppose healthcare? Yet not only is that a rather inapt term for the process of bashing in a baby’s skull, vacuuming out her brains, tearing her limb from limb, and selling her body parts off for profit, it is in fact the precise opposite of truth. Barrenness is the opposite of reproduction, just as killing is the opposite of healthcare. Then, of course, there is “gender affirming care.” Who dares oppose care? Put it to the man on the street, how many would you have to interview before you found one willing to come out as vociferously anti-care? “Yep, my pappy was against care, and I’m agin’ it too, care is for suckers [spit].” Affirmation: another word it would take a heart of stone to oppose. Yet look closer: if “gender affirming care” were truly at work, it would involve telling girls it’s good to be a girl and telling boys it’s good to be a boy. In medicine today, on the other hand, “gender affirmation” is not about making our patients feel comfortable in their own bodies, but encouraging their discomfort: it means telling a girl she’s a boy. It is about denying her sex, the precise opposite of affirming it. As for the “care” part, that can refer both to the uncaring, harmful process of genital mutilation and the cavalier (anything but care-ful) deployment of sterilizing hormones. Apparently, calling gender affirming care by the more truthful name of “genital destroying irreversible harm” was not a big hit with the American Academy of Pediatrics’ public relations team. I’m sure you can think of other examples from the past few years where sinister initiatives were put forward with the most positive, unimpeachable names.

Which brings us to my latest disillusionment. I have always viewed myself as an advocate for children’s rights. I think Katy Faust is doing the Lord’s work with Them Before Us. Children are far too often an afterthought to the wants and desires (and, especially lately, fears) of adults, and that is a battle worth fighting. Much of my own public advocacy can be framed in a children’s rights perspective, whether fighting against childhood lockdown and masking and vaccine mandates, attacking big tech and big pharma’s intrusions on childhood, or defending free play. So please believe me when I say I take no joy in writing this, but it’s time to beware the call for children’s rights.

What scared me straight was last week’s ‘special communication’ in JAMA Pediatrics: “Reimagining Children’s Rights in the US,” brought to you by an all-star team of doctors, lawyers, and academics from influential institutions. The report was developed over several months by a steering committee and advisory committee overflowing with experts. There is much to commend in their work, and I agree entirely that, as they put it, “political jockeying by different interest groups and the pursuit of profit are repeatedly favored over the rights and healthy development of children.” Indeed, at first glance, the initiative seems an unalloyed good, building up support for advancing the idea of children’s rights in America and calling upon fantastic ideas like children’s “right to play.” Many of the lead authors have dedicated careers to causes like fighting child trafficking and abuse, and I hope God continues to bless them in those endeavors.

But… look closer.

“Young people, mobilized through the internet and social media, are emerging as active agents of their rights via activism around issues such as climate justice, racial equity, economic justice, and the prevention of gun violence. […] There are already large groups of young people activated by social challenges, inequity, and discrimination […] Enabling and encouraging collective action is one of many benefits of using a children’s rights approach […] the next phase of US children’s rights advocacy would greatly benefit from strategic investments in a collaborative innovation and learning platform for coordinating, designing, prototyping, and testing children’s rights efforts. To launch the next wave and next generation of scholars and activists, we recommend the establishment of a national learning network with active youth leadership and a coordinating center that can organize, support, and sustain a national children’s rights platform that would catalyze the development of projects and innovations sparked within the strategies and children’s rights issue areas.”

Emphasis mine.

Are you starting to see “children’s rights” in a new light? A wholesome, universally-supported concept transforming before our very eyes into the latest iteration of some centrally controlled, dark money funded coalition of social justice warriors. Dreams of babies legally protected from organ harvesting dissolve into nightmares about a lavishly-funded army of pre-programmed Greta Thunbergs lecturing you on the evils of white supremacist imperialism forever and ever…

What room, in such a project, would there be for a traditional, apolitical understanding of children’s rights? Would Katy Faust, with her brave message on the importance of marriage and the dangers of no-fault divorce, be allowed within a mile of that “coordinating center”? What about Lila Rose?

But wait, there’s more. From Table 1, “Strategies for Advancing Children’s Rights in the US,” come the following examples of successful “youth activism” strategies: “DREAMers for Immigration Rights, LGBTQIA+ Movement.” And again, from the same table, the following successful examples of “synergistic alignment”: “climate change, gun violence, immigration movements.”

Imagine being the person who thinks, “you know, there just isn’t enough talk of climate change out there, hardly anyone has heard about it, let’s play on society’s compassion for abused foster children to trick them into raising lots of money for another climate change activist group.” I mean, gross.

As for the LGBTQIA+ Movement, yes, you read that right. The “children’s rights” advocates include trans “rights” in their movement. Which means a cause that presents itself as protecting children is in fact fully on board with mutilating them. In this twisted context, embracing “children’s rights” could very well mean the “right” of preteens to cut off their breasts.

Dare I ask what measures such an activist collective would take to protect the most fundamental children’s right of all, an unborn child’s right to life? Somehow I fear what with all the climate change and trans activism, the right to life might fall between the cracks. That’s best case scenario; more likely, their funders will soon encourage them to rally for teenagers’ “reproductive rights.” Children have a right to kill children, too!

Ok, so there’s yet another bloated partisan activist group on the horizon, but hey, that’s what the American Academy of Pediatrics has become too, so no biggie, we’re used to it, right? It’s not like they’re gonna pull a serpent in the garden and turn children’s rights into their exact opposite. Well, about that…    

The child’s rights experts in JAMA repeatedly praise a landmark document in the children’s rights movement, The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. I fear they may be lying through their teeth. Traditional children’s rights activists like Katy Faust argue that this widely-ratified UN document, in Article 7, asserts that children have a right (“as far as possible”) to be raised by their mother and father. The medical/legal establishment, however, does not see it that way. As one expert put it a few years ago:

“Contrary to Faust’s statement, there is nothing in the convention stating that a child has the right to a mother and a father. Throughout, ‘parents’ are referred to without regard to gender or sexual orientation.”

Again, emphasis mine.

Did you catch that sleight of hand? The UN Convention was written in 1989 and said children have a right to their parents. The first gay marriage bill in the whole world didn’t come into effect until… 2001. Yet because the UN didn’t think to specify that “parents” means “mother and father,” years before anyone conceivably thought that would ever need to be specified, today the experts are saying that the UN Convention clearly demonstrates that a child does not have a right to her mother, if two men (or three, or more? Parents are also “referred to without regard to” number) want to raise her. Something expressly written to guarantee a child’s right to her mother and father is instead twisted into guaranteeing she can legally be taken away from one or both. See how this works?

We now begin to understand the fatal flaw in this children’s rights discussion. Rights that depend on the political fashions of the moment are not rights at all, simply passing fads. Inalienable, unchanging rights – in other words, any rights at all – cannot exist absent an inalienable, unchanging rights-giver.

No better illustration can I find of this principle than that provided by one of the leading child’s rights activists, a major force behind the JAMA statement. Jonathan Todres, Distinguished University Professor and Professor of Law at Georgia State University, is a brilliant legal scholar, author, and editor most notably of The Oxford Handbook of Children’s Rights Law. He also is very active on Twitter (they always expose themselves on Twitter, they never learn).

Something happened at the Supreme Court on June 24th of this year that really upset this law professor (I wonder, what could it have been?). His learned response:

Yes, you read that right. A law professor whose entire career is based on the concept of children’s rights thinks that your constitutional rights should be transitory, subject to change as times (and “understandings”) change. Did the iPhone come out with an updated model? Time to reassess some “rights”! In other words, he does not believe in rights at all. Excuse my language, but the bleeping life-long rights activist does not believe in rights!

So you see, we are back with the serpent in the garden. Beware the growing “children’s rights” movement. Any more support for activists like this in their quest for collective social justice activism and pretty soon your children will not be allowed to be children, or to have rights, at all.