Parental Rights Archives - Marilyn Singleton, MD JD

America Out Loud PULSE: From Physician to Activist with Dr. Jane Hughes

From my America Out Loud Pulse podcast with Dr. Jane Hughes – https://www.americaoutloud.news/from-physician-to-activist-meet-jane-hughes-md/

There was a time when patients sought medical care from a physician, not a “healthcare system.” Now there’s over-priced health insurance that falls short when you actually need it; Medicare Advantage plans that trap you like a roach motel and then don’t provide care when you actually get sick.

Rather than going after flash mob thieves, the government eyeballing parents who have the audacity to actually go to PTA meetings. Schools are supporting so-called gender affirmation without parental notification or consent. Physicians are acquiescing to government, corporate, and political pressures rather than individualized patient care. What’s a person to do?

Almost 50 years ago, an iconic speech in a critically acclaimed film written by Paddy Chayesfsky expressed it better than I ever could: (Peter Finch as Howard Beale, Network, 1976.)

I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth; banks are going bust; shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter; punks are running wild in the street, and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it.

We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat. And we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be!

We all know things are bad — worse than bad — they’re crazy.

It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out any more. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we’re living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, “Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials, and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone.”

Well, I’m not going to leave you alone.

I want you to get mad!

I don’t want you to protest. I don’t want you to riot. I don’t want you to write to your Congressman, because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write. I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street.

All I know is that first, you’ve got to get mad.

You’ve got to say, “I’m a human being, goddammit! My life has value!”

So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell:

“I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!!”

I recently heard someone say that there are three kinds of people in this world: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who wonder what happened. We must be the people who makes things happen. No act is too small. As Sir Edmund Burke said 200 years ago, “Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little.”

My guest, Dr. Jane Hughes has put the act in activism and will share her thoughts about medicine, our health care “system,” and the government’s role in our lives.

Bio

Dr. Jane Hughes is the current president of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. She is a board-certified ophthalmologist and a fellow of the American College of Surgeons. She received her medical degree from the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio where she also completed her residency. Dr. Hughes is co-founder of American Doctors for Truth and serves on Congressman Chip Roy’s Physician Advisory Council for Healthcare Policy.

America Out Loud PULSE: I Have 5 Words for These Legislators: Stay Away From Our Children

From my America Out Loud Pulse podcast with Dr. Diana Blum –https://www.americaoutloud.news/i-have-5-words-for-these-legislators-stay-away-from-our-children/

Who on earth came up with the idea that having a race to the bottom would close the achievement gap among minorities and Whites and Asians. Some schools are going gradeless, and cancelling honors classes, and not informing students that they received National Merit scholarships. This is carrying diversity, equity, and inclusion too far. As Booker T. Washington said, “No greater injury can be done to any youth than to let him feel that because he belongs to this or that race, he will be advanced in life regardless of his own merits or efforts.” The whole point is to raise the achievement level of underachievers, not to stunt the progress of the high achievers to even things out.

This reminds me of various programs in 1964’s War on Poverty that sought to raise people out of poverty but resulted in, for many, intergenerational dependence on the government and for many, stagnation at subsistence level.

The tactics of the War on Poverty included AFDC—Aid to Families with Dependent Children—where if there was a man in the house, there were no welfare benefits. What happened to keeping a family together during troubled times? What happened to encouraging families to lean on one another and discuss and hopefully resolve their financial issues?

The thought process behind AFDC was only the beginning of the state’s new role of in loco parentis. This goes beyond co-parenting: parental rights are under assault. Laws are emerging that allow teachers more control over the intimate details of our children’s lives than their parents have. In multiple states children can have abortions with no parental involvement, irrespective of possible harm due to abuse in several states.

A proposed California law (AB665) would allow any minor as young as age 12 to seek mental health services and go to a government “residential shelter” without their parents’ knowledge or consent. Current law quite reasonably allows parents to be out of the loop only if the child presents as danger of serious physical or mental harm to themselves or others or to be the alleged victim of incest or child abuse.

Another California bill (AB957) that has passed through the assembly “would include a parent’s affirmation of the child’s gender identity as part of the health, safety, and welfare of the child.” This would become as factor in determining whether as parent is guilty of child abuse in custody hearings. How is this in the best interests of the child when this bill applies to children of all ages, not just, for example, 12 and up? So, the parent who “affirms” gets custody and the other parent is labeled a child abuser.

I have five words for these legislators: stay away from our children.

My guest and I will discuss some policies of some of our schools that intrude on parental rights, many times resulting in harm to children medically and educationally.

Bio

Dr. Diana Blum is a board-certified neurologist who completed her medical school training at the University of Chicago, Pritzker school of Medicine and her Neurology Residency training at Stanford University Medical Center. She is currently in private practice in Silicon Valley, California where she focuses on the chronic management of patients with Parkinson’s Disease. When not practicing clinical medicine, Dr. Blum is a fierce patient and physician advocate, defending Hippocratic oath medicine and the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship through education and activism.