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‘Can you spell, intrusion?’ Oregon bill supporting ‘universal’ gov’t visits for those with newborns put on fast-track

January 31, 2019 | | Print Article

While many states are passing controversial abortion laws, Oregon is now considering mandating “universal” governmental visits to homes with newborn babies.

The shocking proposed legislation, known as Senate Bill 526, is still developing with not many details available yet but Oregon’s Democratic Governor Kate Brown is apparently on board, according to Life Site News.

(Image: Flickr)

The Oregon Health Authority was directed “to study home visiting by licensed health care providers” in the proposed legislation which was given “emergency” status, requiring action before the end of the year. Potentially setting up Oregon families for invasive interference into their private lives by the state government, the bill and its tone have raised concern.

“What’s the big emergency?” Paula Bolyard asked in an op-ed for PJ Media. “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, the director of the Oregon Health Authority, is apparently “excited” about the six-year program unveiled in Brown’s budget proposals, according to the Beaverton Valley Times.

“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.”

 

Bolyard, who has been involved in homeschooling for more than two decades, contends that 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.”

Advocates for the surveillance methods, Bolyard noted, argue that the government, “despite volumes of evidence to the contrary,” can protect children who are at risk for abuse and neglect.

“In Oregon, in fact, children in the foster care system are abused at twice the national rate,” Bolyard continued. “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).”

The idea of “universal home visits” is also being floated in Washington where Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee has proposed the same idea for his state.

“It’s frightening to think about what would happen to parents who refuse such visits,” Bolyard wrote.

Oregon Health & Science University’s Dr. Alanna Braun, a member of the Oregon Pediatrics Society, explained how the program would not only monitor children, but the adults in the home as well, according to Woodburn Independent.

Every family, regardless of income or address, could visited by a nurse three times who would be checking the infant’s surroundings as well as monitor new mothers for signs of postpartum depression.

The statewide program is seeking $4 million from this year’s Legislature, with matching federal funds, in order to serve about 10,000 Medicaid families, according to Jonathan Modie, communications officer with the Oregon Health Authority, an agency established under the Obama administration in 2009.

“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,” Bolyard cautioned in her op-ed.

“The bottom line is that the statists pushing these policies do not trust us with our own children,” she added. “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.”

She found plenty of support for her views from others who were equally alarmed.

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Frieda Powers
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