On November 14, the parents of an 11-year old aboriginal girl were supported by a judge in Brantford, ON in their decision to use "traditional" and "alternative" therapies in their efforts to cure her of leukaemia. I applaud the decision but think the reasons given for it miss the mark.

The case has been framed in terms of aboriginal rights and traditional healing. It should have been set in terms of parental rights for all Canadians. After all, the responsibility for the care, nurture, protection and training of children belongs to the parents, not the state. Around the world, agencies of the state constantly engage themselves in efforts to expand their turf at the expense of the integrity of the family. In today’s Germany, (not so many decades ago known for its brutal, conformity-demanding, state-imposed political machinery) parents have had their children seized for their determination to home-school them. Parents being jailed for home-schooling? Children taken into custody and ripped from their families because of a family's religious convictions?

Even in our own country, we have painfully relived some of the shameful saga of Canada's residential schools and the damage done to First Nations people, communities and families. Stories of sexual and physical abuse and the forbidding of children even to speak their own language moved many of us to tears and revealed to us one aspect of the social factors contributing to dysfunction on many reserves. But what was the “original sin” of the Canadian government of the time? It was the illegitimate intrusion into the homes of First Nations people, the assertion that the state could make better decisions for children than their own parents. That arrogance and that intrusion were wrong, are wrong and will always be wrong. Of course, there are cases where blatant physical abuse or neglect—threatening the lives of dependent children—call for state intervention. Those rare cases do not justify the meddling of bureaucrats in the decisions of sincere parents who happen to think differently than they do.

I have seen articles in the mainstream press deploring the decision to allow this girl’s parents to choose alternative treatment. Some writers are calling this abuse. They are treating it as a death sentence for this girl. Let’s consider a few facts:

• Even the medical “experts” (ie. those representing mainstream medicine in Canada) can only speculate that with standard protocols, this girl would have an 85-90% likelihood of recovering. This is no guarantee. What if she is part of the 5-15% demographic? That is an unknown but if it were the case (and I pray it is not) then her mother would be entirely justified in seeking to protect her from the agony of chemo.
• Some do recover using alternative therapies. The scorn and derision that have been heaped on other-than-mainstream approaches is another form of professional arrogance. I personally know men and women who have recovered from cancer and other degenerative diseases using natural methods, people who had previously been abandoned as hopeless by the allopathic mainstream. Every human being is unique. No medical path can claim success 100% of the time.
• Some of the same medical professionals who claim to be so offended (or slighted) by parents making difficult medical choices for their children seem to have no problem with expectant mothers “choosing” to kill their babies before they are born. Where is the outrage then? That is a decision guaranteed to be fatal for the child and potentially problematic for the mother. The publicly-funded and pharmaceutically-oriented medical mainstream and the ever-present cancer-research promoters have also chosen to downplay, minimize or reject the multitude of peer-reviewed studies showing a strong correlation between breast cancer and induced abortions, especially in the first pregnancy. Anyone howling “abuse” in regard to a family’s right to choose or refuse medical treatment for their children should be vigorously lobbying the provincial health ministries and the cancer societies to ensure that true information about the Abortion-Breast Cancer link is available to every young girl BEFORE she makes a decision or is coerced into killing her baby. To fail to do so is not only abusive but hypocritical. Over 100,000 babies die in Canada every year from induced abortion. The number of young women who die of cancer as an indirect result will never be known.
• This case of the 11-year old girl involves medical decisions and perspectives and the results—good or bad—will affect her physical health and lifespan. The responsibility of parents to guide and protect their children is much broader than that. If the state can tell you what medical treatment you must give your child, it can also tell you what worldview you must impart to them as they are growing up. Already, the public school systems in most provinces are imposing non-Christian beliefs on very young children, in spite of the objections of their parents. Again, the state wants control. Hitler went after the youth in Germany. Lenin and Stalin and Mao went after the youth during their brutal dictatorships. The increasingly-socialist governments of our day want the minds, attitudes and world views of our children and are promoting their secular notions in the classroom from kindergarten through university. Whether they are pushing sexual lifestyles or ridiculing Christian beliefs, these brazen invaders of domestic sovereignty are so shameless or so deluded that they no longer feel compelled to camouflage their intent. Like the ISIS executioners who now carry out their grisly beheadings without masks, these destroyers of innocence now proclaim their immoral curricula without apology. The defrauding of youth, robbing them of purpose, moral guidelines and meaning—besides bringing many young people to depression and confusion—does actually shorten many lives with suicide, drug use and sexually-transmitted diseases. Where is the public outrage over this state-sponsored destruction of life?

I acknowledge and grieve the damage done through the residential schools, especially the taking of children from their families against their will. However, Canadians need to recognize that, today, children are still being taken away—not only from First Nations families but from Canadian families of all ethnic backgrounds. We have now entered the era of the “non-residential  schools”, where children may sleep in their own beds at night but spend the best hours of their day having their culture robbed from them and their families’ traditions and world views replaced with those of the “education establishment”.

This question of a little girl’s life and whether or not she should have chemo goes much deeper than we may have thought. It’s time for parents to reclaim their rights and responsibilities; we owe it to those little ones whose lives and wellbeing have been entrusted to us by God.

The Christian Heritage Party affirms that “it is the responsibility of the parents—and not of the state—to raise and educate their children.”

This affirmation is part of our Christian heritage.

For more of CHP’s “Better Solutions” on this and other topics, visit chp.ca