Shawn Vestal: Spokane Valley parental rights proposal endangers the rights of others

Should parents who refuse to vaccinate their children be allowed to send them to school during a disease outbreak?

Under a “parental rights” ordinance being floated by a Spokane Valley city councilman, the answer is: Sure!

Say there was a whooping cough epidemic. Or an outbreak of mumps. Parents who had already decided not to vaccinate their kids would “have complete authority to decide whether or not to keep their children home,” according to draft language of the ordinance.

If school officials think it’s a bad idea, tough. If public health officials recommend against it, who cares? If the parents who vaccinate their kids don’t like it, they can always exercise their own parental right to keep their kids home, too.

This proposal envisions total, complete, unfettered parental authority, after all – an authority so complete it can louse up the education and health of other people’s children.

Welcome home, polio.

The proposal to extend parental rights to the question of school “exclusion” during epidemics is just one of the bizarre and unworkable conundrums at the center of a parental-rights ordinance put forth by Ed Pace, along with a couple of his fellow Spokane Valley city councilmen.

The first draft of the “parental declaration of rights” is packed with assertions that parents – not the government or corporations or unions or teachers – have control over their children’s vaccinations, over school “exclusion” during epidemics, over all aspects of education and health care, and over who else is allowed into a public bathroom or locker room with their child.

“Parents have authority over and responsibility for their children in all areas of life,” it asserts.

Pace, a genial Lutheran pastor and libertarian, calls the proposal more of a spur to discussion than finalized legislation, and says he’s responding to concerns he hears from parents. Parents who are outraged their teenage daughters have access to birth control without their say-so. Parents who object to sex education. Parents who want to police the bathrooms to “protect” their children from transgender people.

Parents who think they should have the right to send their unvaccinated kids into the herd.

“Personally, I have been vaccinated, my wife has been vaccinated, we had our kids vaccinated,” Pace said. “I’ve never known anybody personally who’s had any effects from vaccinations. For me, this is about representing my constituents. It’s just a parent’s right to choose.”

State law requires vaccinations but also allows parents wide latitude to opt out. A lot of us do, and the objectors come from the left and right. About 7 percent of kids in Spokane County have personal or religious exemptions to the vaccination requirement. It’s not an exaggeration to say people who make this choice are helping to make it easier for diseases to take hold, even for those of us who do vaccinate.

In the case of an outbreak, it is up to public health officials and schools to establish quarantine requirements – as it should be. Quarantine authority is based on state law, which the city can’t just ignore, as well as the glaringly commonsense notion that we should not let community health decisions be made by people who believe in nonsense.

Even if they have reproduced.

The ACLU of Washington has weighed in with a letter to the city attorney, noting the foundation of state and federal law establishing school districts’ authority to require vaccinations (with exemptions); public health officials’ right to determine quarantine requirements; state and federal authority over curriculum and graduation requirements; and other pesky legal, practical and ethical obstacles.

“We write because, as I am sure you recognize, if adopted, this ordinance purports to override federal and state law, would seriously misinform your residents, and would sow confusion and promote illegal action,” wrote William Block, a volunteer attorney for the ACLU.

A key issue here revolves around teenage girls and sex, and the desire of some parents to control their daughters’ health care. (When it comes to the continuing cycle of culture-war sexual panics, there is always less panic about sons.) Pace cites examples of parents who are outraged that a teenage girl can get birth control or an abortion without her parents’ permission.

But the ACLU notes that a number of state statutes give older minors legal control over their own health care – including decisions about whether to have an abortion or get tested for STDs or undergo mental health counseling. “Mature minors” have rights, too.

While most of us would agree that we want to make the key decisions for our children and families – as opposed to the big, bad, sexually permissive government – most of us also know that some children need to be protected from parents. This is just a fact.

We know we should be careful about spreading disease, even if not every parent believes it. We know that there are older teenagers whose rights extend beyond those of a 5-year-old or a 10-year-old – that maturing juveniles have rights of their own, including expanding sovereignty over their own bodies.

Pace said opponents of the measure seem to think parents have no rights at all, which strikes me as hyperbolic. Does anyone believe parents should have no rights at all? Some of the concerns Pace said he’d heard aren’t accurate – for example, he said a mother he knew was told by a high school official that her child was required to take a sex education course to graduate. There is no such state or district requirement, and students can opt out of the single reproductive-health segment of the health curriculum.

As for parents “protecting” their kids from “transgendered” people in bathrooms, Pace sees it as straightforward.

“What this is about, is parents, especially parents of young daughters, their feeling that if their daughter is in the girls’ restroom and somebody comes in who they feel is really a male, they want to be able to say, ‘Hey, would you mind waiting a minute?’ ” he said.

Pace, as I said, is a genial sort. He imagines very friendly outcomes.

I’m more concerned about the other end of the spectrum: Is there any check on parental authority? Does a child have rights, independent of a parent? Any point at which others – whoever they may be – have a right to determine that a parent’s wishes are wrong?

Pace said abuse is where he draws the line. He said his proposal is not meant to prevent abuse reporting by school or health care officials. It’s so broadly drawn, though, that it would be hard to see how abuse didn’t fall squarely under a parent’s authority – which is described repeatedly as “complete.”

Across the border in Idaho – Spokane Valley’s ideological soul mate – parental rights are a popular political issue, as well. Part of the No-It-Damn-Well-Does-Not-Take-A-Village movement.

Lawmakers there have repeatedly resisted efforts to make it a crime to fail to obtain health care for a gravely sick child, on the grounds of religious belief. This is not hypothetical: Children from one religious community near Boise, the Followers of Christ, die regularly because their parents believe modern medicine is evil.

So when their children die from simple infections – it’s a question of parental rights. When their kids die from untreated diabetes – parental rights. If an infant can’t breathe and the parents don’t bother visiting an emergency room – you guessed it.

Would Pace go that far? He said it was an extreme example, outside of the considerations of his proposal.

“When it gets to those extreme cases, I’m really not sure,” he said. “I don’t have an opinion on that.”