Kidnapping is kidnapping even if it’s done by the government under color of law.
Drake Pardo, an autistic 4-year-old in Texas with severe medical issues, including long-standing eating issues, is being raised by loving parents. Under the medical care and direction of a doctor, an administered procedure caused Drake to nearly choke to death and put him in the hospital for five days. According to the parents, the doctor in question did not come by even once to check on the welfare of the child while he was in the hospital. (See this video from the Texas Home School Coalition.)
So the parents, at the recommendation of their medical adviser, quite reasonably requested the insertion of a feeding tube. The response of the hospital was to refer them to Child Protective Services as child abusers. The doctor who made the child abuse complaint admitted that it was based only on an incomplete review of Drake’s medical records.
The next thing the parents knew, Child Protective Services, a misnomer if there ever was one, showed up at their door with an armed police escort and forcibly removed Drake from the only home he had ever known. CPS refused even to tell the parents what the allegations against them were. In the video of the seizure, Drake’s father can be heard trying to comfort his son who is crying because he is being carried off by total strangers, and neither his father nor his mother are allowed to go with him.
CPS said they took the child because the parents did not show up for a scheduled appointment. But CPS admitted in court that the parents were never told about the appointment at all. Hard to keep an appointment when you don’t know there is one.
The doctor CPS cited as justification for this legalized kidnapping admitted under oath that he had not read all of Drake’s medical records, had never examined him or even met him. He said in court that he did not think there was an emergency that would require Drake’s seizure and said he had never recommended it. So the bureaucrats at CPS appointed themselves judge, jury, and executioner in this deal.
They got the emergency removal order in an ex parte hearing before a judge, which means neither the parents nor their attorney was told about it. The hearing involved just the CPS, a doctor’s affidavit, and a judge. The parents were not informed of this hearing and so had no opportunity to hear the charges against them, have the benefit of counsel, or examine their accusers in open court.
It’s also worthy of note that no CPS worker had ever seen or talked with Drake, his parents, family members, or neighbors before ripping him from the arms of his parents.
Later in this cobbed-up mess, the parents heard for the first time what the allegations against them were. The hospital told the appeals court that the mom and dad were guilty of something called Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, in which parents seek unnecessary medical treatment for a child. (For my money, wanting to keep your four-year-old from choking to death doesn’t qualify.) So the parents have been labeled by the state as both medically abusive and mentally ill.
Adding insult to insult, and injury to injury, the judge told them if they spoke a word about this miscarriage of justice to the media or in public, he would throw them in jail.
Dr. James Dobson said, "So, as of this moment, you've got a special needs kid who needs his parents and needs their love, sitting in foster care with them not being able to hug him and hold him and cuddle him and tell him it's going to be okay...That's a disaster, that is outrageous.”
The Bible has unambiguously placed child-rearing on the hands of parents, not the state. “You (fathers) shall teach (my words) to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise” (Deuteronomy 6:7). “Fathers...bring them (your children) up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4).
The Supreme Court agreed with Scripture in its landmark 1923 ruling in Meyer v. State of Nebraska. “It is the natural duty of the parent to give his children education suitable to their station in life.” In 1925, the Court spoke of the “liberty of parents and guardians to direct the upbringing and education of children...The child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right and the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.”
In 1972, the Court said, “This primary role of the parents in the upbringing of their children is now established beyond debate as an enduring tradition.” If liberals truly believe in stare decisis (the principle of following prior judicial precedent) and that Supreme Court rulings are “the law of the land,” then by their own lights Texas is way bad wrong on this one.
Drake’s case has been appealed to the highest court in the state. Both the Bible and the Supreme Court have declared that directing a child’s upbringing is the responsibility of parents, not the government. Somebody needs to tell that to the Supreme Court of Texas before another family gets hurt.
