From: wmporter@jetson.uh.edu (William M. Porter)
Subject: Hillary Clinton & children's rights 
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Organization: University of Houston
Distribution: usa
Date: Sat, 22 Aug 1992 09:57:00 GMT

In article that was part of the thread on Pat Buchanan's speech, Alex Crain
writes...

 >	In law school, Hillary Clinton drafted some papers discussing
 >the legal aspects of being a housewife, and likened it to the legal
 >position of being a slave, because of the financial dependance
 >involved. She also did a paper on the rights of children to sue their
 >parents, and presumably concluded that under current law, it's a
 >legitimate scenerio (I haven't read it, but given that Pat said she
 >"supported" it ..).

Actually, to my knowledge, none of her writings deal with the status of
housewives, and the point of the remark about marriage being a dependancy
relationship like slavery had nothing to do with money.

 >	All of these were theoretical arguments for law class.
 >Claiming these were position papers is streching it, to say the least.

Not so, Mr. Crain. The most important of these articles, the one which attempts
to redefine the status of children, was written in 1979, when she was out of
law school, over thirty, and married to the governor of Arkansas. I am willing
to agree that her articles are not "position papers" for her husband's
candidacy, but I don't recall that anyone ever said they were.

In this article ("Children's Rights: A Legal Perspective"), she wrote:

  > I prefer that [court] intervention into an ongoing family be
  > limited to decisions that could have long-term and possible
  > irreparable effects if they were not resolved. Decisions about
  > motherhood and abortion, schooling, cosmetic surgery, treatment of
  > venereal disease, or employment, and others where the decision or
  > lack of one will significantly affect the child's future should not
  > be made unilaterally by parents. Children should have a right to be
  > permitted to decide their own future if they are competent.

It has been claimed repeatedly in the media that she is concerned only about
strengthening the protection of children from abusive parents. It has yet to be
demonstrated that the present laws regarding child abuse are inadequate.
(THOUGHT ALERT: The tragic fact that child abuse continues to be a serious
problem in the USA does not in itself argue that the laws regarding this crime
are inadequate.) And in any case, as the quotation makes manifest, her
interests go way beyond child abuse.

I for one reject utterly the idea that any federal or state judge will ever
love my children more deeply or more wisely than my wife and I do ourselves. To
redefine the status of children before the law in order to deal with such
issues as "schooling, cosmetic surgery...or employment" suggests that Ms.
Clinton thinks--or thought in 1979--that parents as a class are hardly to be
trusted.

It is claimed by Mr. Clinton and many others that this is a bogus issue. It is
not. Since classical antiquity, the family has been regarded as THE basic
social and political unit. It is the principal school for all future citizens,
among other things. Even today, much of the authority that formal schools
possess derives from the notion that educators act "in loco parentis" (in the
place of the parent). Radical redefinition of the legal nature of the family is
potentially revolutionary in its consequences.

Secondly, it seems to me and to many other Americans that for some time now the
federal courts have done more to run this country than anybody else.
This may be--as Judge Bork suggested--because our elected representatives
(Republicans as well as Democrats) are cowards. Whatever the cause, it seems to
many people, myself included, that proposals that would EXTEND the power and
authority of the courts to intervene in the lives of citizens are very
unwise.

William Porter  * * * Classical Languages: University of Houston
wmporter@jetson.uh.edu

Newsgroups: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh