Posted on 06/17/2014 11:07:15 PM PDT by Morgana
A hospital in Michigan is coming under fire from a parents after its staff attempted to take a Mother’s daughter and give her a private talk promoting birth control and sexual relations.
The story is coming out on the same day LifeNews is reporting that Justina Pelletier is finally heading home to her parents’ custody after a lengthy headline-grabbing legal battle with the state of Massachusetts, which took their daughter away from them.
OneNewsNow has the full details on this story, which should come as a warning to parents:
michigan2After running up against an alleged state law that sweeps aside parental rights, a Michigan mom is warning parents about the direction health care is headed in America.
The mother of a 17-year-old daughter was shocked by what she believed to be a foreboding sign of the times when she arrived at Sparrow Hospital in Lansing, Michigan. Fearing her parental rights had stealthily been swept out from under her, here’s what she had to say:
“Let’s get one thing straight: no doctor or nurse is going to sequester my children in an exam room and talk to them privately. Period.”
Parental notice at Mich. hospitalArriving at the doctor’s office to have her daughter’s foot checked out for a recent appointment, Christy Duffy came face-to-face with a sign posted on the receptionist window stating that new laws “require a nurse to have a short 5-minute private conversation with your child.”
“I asked if this policy was in effect and if so, how could I opt out,” Duffy explained in her blog post. “The receptionist told me it’s a new law and there is no opting out.”
Both sides stood their ground.
“Working to keep my cool, I said, ‘I’m sure there is,’” Duffy recounted. “She said, ‘No there isn’t.’ At which point I asked if I needed to leave and go to the urgent care center because I was not submitting my daughter to such a conversation.”
At this hospital, evidently, parental rights were something that simply weren’t tolerated.
“That did not go over well,” Duffy explained. “The receptionist closed the window … Almost immediately the office manager turned the corner and said, ‘Mrs. Duffy, may I speak with you?’ She said there was a new policy that would allow a child to access his/her medical records online and the child would be allowed to block a parent from viewing the website.”
Then the confidential nurse-to-child conversation was addressed.
“The nurse would also inform my children that the doctor’s office is a safe place for them to receive information about STDs, HIV and birth control,” Duffy continued. “That is what the nurse would be chatting about with my children without any pesky parental oversight.”
This message was received with composure, but not compliance.
“I kindly informed her that no one would be talking with my children privately, and I needed to know how to opt out of this policy before bringing Amy back for her physical next month,” Duffy relayed. “By this time, the doctor was ready to see Amy, so I had to cut the conversation short because I was not letting my girl out of my eyesight or earshot … Not when it was clear that these people were angling to undermine my parental authority.”
Ditto.
Under 18 is under 18 period. They are under parental control.
My teenagers had the right (that I gave them) to request a private conversation with their doctor whenever they wished. At one point, the doctor wanted to speak to my daughter in private and *she* insisted that I remain in the room.
Another time, my son did pull the privacy card. After he spoke with the doctor, he opened up to me on things that had been bothering him for some time. He finally was comfortable to come out with it all.
Once they reach a certain age, I found that it’s best to give them some control. At 17, they’ll be doing this by themselves in less than a year and they’ve got to learn how to navigate the medical world. But that’s still between parent and child, not up to the doctor.
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