Why We Fight for the Parental Rights Amendment

The Parental Rights Foundation is leading a coalition of allied organizations to amend the US Constitution with these words: “The liberty of parents to direct the upbringing, education, and care of their children is a fundamental right.”

There are many reasons why the Parental Rights Amendment is so important. The debates raging across our nation over whether parents should be involved in or even know what is going on in public schools with their own children are one reason. But there is another: the growing threat posed to parental rights by the UN and other international bodies.

Sexual conduct involving persons below the domestically prescribed minimum age of consent to sex may be consensual in fact, if not in law.

So declared a report released on March 8, 2023, by the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), an international legal body with numerous links to the United Nations. (For example, the current ICJ president, Professor Robert Goldman, previously served as the UN Human Rights Commission’s Independent Expert on the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism.)

This ignited a firestorm. Was this international body calling for age-of-consent laws to be abolished? Was it actually saying that all that matters is consent, and that an 11-year-old girl could consent to sex with her 40-year-old guidance counselor? Was the ICJ calling for child prostitution to be legalized?

Perhaps realizing that either the ICJ report had crossed a line or this body of international lawyers had failed to be precise with what they wrote (maybe intentionally?), the UN issued the following clarification on April 18:

“… the report released by the International Commission of Jurists in March has recently been misrepresented on a number of websites. It did not call for the decriminalization of sex with children, nor did it call for the abolition of the age of consent. … The UN is resolute in fighting the sexual exploitation of children, upholds that sexual exploitation and abuse of children is a crime, and supports countries to protect children.”

The Center for Family & Human Rights (C-Fam), which works to protect our nation’s sovereignty and parental rights at the UN, also released a detailed analysis of the ICJ report, and some of the reporting following it. We encourage you to read C-Fam’s analysis here.

The clarification from the UN was good. But it still doesn’t address numerous other major dangers posed to US families by international bodies or UN treaties like the Convention on the Rights of the Child. And that is why we continue to fight to protect parental rights in the black and white of the US Constitution through the Parental Rights Amendment.

You see, as long as parental rights are not found in the black and white of the US Constitution, an international treaty ratified with the consent of the U.S. Senate could eliminate parental rights. The Parental Rights Amendment to the Constitution would protect families in the US from this looming international threat once and for all. It would protect parental rights as a fundamental, God-given right, strengthening family freedom from government coercion at the local, state, and federal level. And no matter what the ICJ or UN or any other international body said in the future, it would ensure that our country protects children by preserving parental rights and family freedom for generations to come.

Thank you for standing with us to support and promote this vital constitutional amendment!