What about kids already born? Do they have rights?

Children should be seen and not heard. WRONG! I’m taking a stand for youngsters today.

 

I know, arguments are raging these days about when a fetus becomes a person. I’m not talking about unborn children. I’m talking about kids. Youngsters already born, alive, and deserving of rights. They are not chattel. They are human beings, and they do  have rights.

 

In a recent MLive newspaper feature, writer Mathew Miller exposes the disgusting fact that child marriage is still legal in Michigan! What the?

 

The article goes on to cite facts about young teens getting married (almost all of them end in divorce). According to the MLive piece, a union only has to be approved by the parents and a judge. Miller tells of one situation in which a 14-year-old girl was married! Sadly, our state legislature has considered bill after bill to correct this situation, but all efforts to change the state law have failed. Pure Michigan.

 

So, then I start thinking about other ways that we’re not being fair to kids.

 

Earlier I mentioned the abortion debate. Isn’t it interesting (or disgusting) that some hard-liners say that even in cases of incest and rape, impregnated young girls, perhaps as young as 10, should not be allowed to have the pregnancy terminated. (Just wait until something like that happens to their granddaughter!)

 

Other items of mistreatment of young kids in the news: (Sex trafficking --- big story in the news right now, clergy abuse, abuse of native kids in US and Canadian boarding homes, and the flourishing child porn trade.

 

Here in the HFP office we’ve been dealing with the broader topic of juveniles since the Supreme Court ruled that we may not hand these young teens life sentences without parole. This concern doesn’t focus on teens of today, but on those men and women who committed crimes while teens and who now can’t get out of prison. Even though the ruling has been handed down by our nation’s highest court, prosecutor after prosecutor, and judge after judge in Michigan, drag their heels.

 

We can and must do better for our kids!

 

“It never really ends...

Children surviving through the cold winds of neglect, and all kinds of misfortune and vile treatment. We see them every day, with broken smiles that endure the painful kicking of their malnourished bellies protruded with dreams that may never see the light of conception...

But with just a little kind word,

A handful of promise,

A heart of compassion,

A smile full of hope,

We would hold hands together in helping them conceive their dreams...

Because they are the little bits and pieces that make us whole...”

― Chinonye J. Chidolue

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