An Abdication of Responsibility—An Erosion of Ordered Liberty—A Triumph for Casey

This morning’s The New York Times has an article on the controversial vote of the Portland, Maine School Board that will enable the independently operated health clinic at the King Middle School (grades six through eight) to provide girls with prescription contraceptives. [HERE] Previously the Portland school system had made condoms available to students. The newly approved program enables the health center physician and nurse practitioners to prescribe contraceptive pills, patches or injections, as well as the morning-after pill. The decision has been met with conflicting reactions—some supportive of, some condemning the decision. One mother in the first camp was quoted by the Times as saying: “I think it’s a great idea… Someone is finally advocating for these students to take care of themselves.” I have the impression that she is not claiming but abdicating the responsibility that properly belongs to her as a parent.

This decision of the Portland School Board is a testament to the most problematic dicta of Planned Parenthood v. Casey about liberty in a democracy: there is “a promise of the Constitution that there is a realm of personal liberty which the government may not enter… At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning of the universe, and the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State.” I think the Casey dictum reinforces the abdication of parental authority that I just mentioned. Moreover, it reflects of failure of the duties of the public education system and of the family to teach and guide young citizens (children) in how to respond to and decide correctly and morally on the major issues of life; it denies children their childhood; it promotes promiscuity; it will increase, not decrease medical problems that these children will encounter as they mature in years but not in responsibility or nobility; it abandons children to their own devices and unregulated decision making; it promotes the fanatical, isolated autonomy that erodes good citizenship and the development of virtuous people; it will augment the growing separation of children, parents and other responsible adults; it will, in short, provide the groundwork for irresponsible behavior in the future of these children as they grow in years without providing the environment for advance in maturity. This decision is built on the fact that our laws veil with confidence counseling and treatment dealing with matters involving “reproductive health”, mental health, and substance abuse regardless of a patient’s age. The conjured government programs which Winston Smith encountered in 1984 that separated parent from child are, in reality, with us now.

Like many other situations of the present day, it is based on law. The good thing about a democratic society is that it can correct bad laws and make them good. But when it does not, a democratic society moves one step closer to the totalitarian-like structure whose mechanisms for the social order are fortified by a morally deficient positivism which leaves in its wake the destruction of ordered liberty.    RJA sj