Tradition and Religion are Not Excuses for Child Abuse
By Galina Varchena
Children are not chattel. Nor are they “mere creatures of the state,” as the Supreme Court of the United States held in Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925). They are, in the humanist tradition, autonomous beings whose dignity and potential demand protection in their own right. And yet, our legal system increasingly treats them as the property of their parents rather than individual beings with their own inalienable rights. While the state has a compelling interest in the welfare of its youth, the ability of the state to protect children from abuse and ensure their well-being is increasingly curtailed by proponents of the Christian Nationalist brand of religious liberty.
While we live in a pluralistic society with a rich tapestry of religious, ethnic and cultural backgrounds, diversity is not a reason to stand by and allow children to be harmed with impunity. And yet those who continue to inflict harm on women and transgender people – including trans youth – in the interest of “protecting the children” are moving legislation that protects abusers from the consequences of their actions. They shield those who would deny their children basic education and healthcare and disguise abuse as discipline from any responsibility for the harm they cause.
At the same time, America’s left flank has given up the “family values” conversation almost entirely to right-wing religious extremists. Humanism has something to offer here. The fight for the future of our country isn’t just happening on the courthouse steps or in the streets; it is happening behind the closed doors of the family home, where the state is increasingly declaring itself powerless to protect the most vulnerable from emotional and physical abuse. We have allowed “religious freedom” and “parental rights” to mean the right of parents to ignore reality, even when doing so carries a body count.
Today, the fight in Idaho serves as a striking example of this legislative malpractice. In 2026, we are seeing the direct consequences of the 2024 ‘Parental Rights in Medical Decision-Making Act’ (S.B. 1329), which mandated parental consent for virtually all healthcare services. This law has effectively restricted the ability of law enforcement and medical professionals to act without explicit parental consent, even in cases of suspected abuse or emergencies. When law enforcement is barred from performing a forensic rape kit because a family-member perpetrator refuses to consent (Idaho Capital Sun, “Idaho’s parental consent law prohibits minors from accessing rape kit exams without parents,” August 6, 2024), or when suicide hotline operators are trained to ‘gently wind down’ calls with suicidal teenagers who cannot obtain parental consent (Idaho Capital Sun, “988 ended his call. Now an Idaho teen is pushing for a fix to the state’s parental consent law,” February 18, 2026), the law is not merely failing to protect children, it is actively harming them.
Despite the harm already inflicted, the far right wants to go even further. They want to give parents complete freedom regarding their children’s education with a new state constitutional amendment, HJR 1 (2026). The amendment declares that “the right of the people to educate their children without government regulation outside of the public schools of the state shall not be infringed.” Idaho already requires no registration, no reporting and no curriculum oversight for homeschooled children. The only remaining requirement is Idaho Code § 33-202, that children between seven and 16 must be instructed in subjects commonly taught in public schools. And although the measure narrowly failed to advance to the Senate — falling just one vote short of the two-thirds majority required — the effort is far from over, and the margin of defeat signals it will almost certainly return. Proponents of this and similar amendments want there to be no requirements whatsoever.
Ending any kind of education oversight isn’t enough, however, and another bill, House Bill 757 (2026), would put parental beliefs above a child’s medical well-being. The bill seeks to narrow the definition of medical neglect, preventing parents from being charged if they seek alternative medical treatment from unlicensed providers, as long as the condition is not immediately life-threatening. There is a big gap between something minor and something life-threatening that includes a whole lot of situations where a lack of appropriate medical care will lead to long-term harm to a child. And, of course, what conservative agenda these days is complete without an attack on trans youth. Two bills, H 572 and H 739 (2026), target schools and health care providers, prohibiting them from withholding information about a child’s social transition from parents and creating a $50,000 private right of action, regardless of whether disclosure is likely to cause physical or mental harm to the child. This is on top of existing laws shielding parents from the consequences of severe medical neglect, even in cases of death, as long as religious dogma is at the root of the treatment (Idaho Code § 18-1501).
Do not let Christian nationalists declare any interference with the family unit to be an attack on the faithful. The faithful deserve better than to have their traditions weaponized as excuses for neglect and abuse. Religious parents should, of course, be free to pass down traditions, faith and their moral teachings. However, religious dogma should never be used as an excuse to allow the death of a child from preventable causes because the parents choose prayer over evidence-based medical treatment. It should not be a justification for raising a child with such a profound lack of education that they are unable to fully participate in society as an adult. Even the Supreme Court, while holding that parents have a constitutionally protected interest in directing their children’s upbringing, explicitly preserved the power of the state ‘to require that all children of proper age attend some school’ and that ‘certain studies plainly essential to good citizenship must be taught.’ Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510, 534 (1925). The Court made it clear that parental authority was never meant to be a license to deny a child a basic education (See Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 1925; and see Wisconsin v. Yoder, 1972).
Legislators in Idaho have already recognized that children who are wards of the state in state institutions and foster care systems possess rights to physical and emotional safety, access to medical and behavioral health services, and freedom from abuse and unreasonable restraints (Idaho Youth in Care Bill of Rights). If only they would extend this logic to all children, regardless of their family situation.
In response to “parental bills of rights,” like those already on the books and making their way through the legislature in Idaho and other states, the secular and humanist movements and our legislators should not be afraid to push for reasonable guardrails: a Children’s Bill of Rights rooted in humanist principles.
This would not be easy. We are faced with possibly the most religious-friendly Supreme Court in U.S. history. In just one recent example, Mahmoud v. Taylor (2025), the Court held 6-3 that parents have a constitutional right under the Free Exercise Clause to direct their children’s religious upbringing, including in the public school classroom (Mahmoud v. Taylor, 606 U.S. 522, 2025). But a failure to make the argument for children’s rights is not a legal inevitability, it is a failure of imagination and a failure of moral courage. There is absolutely room in the jurisprudence to affirmatively protect children’s rights.
Here are a few core principles that should be included in any discussion of a children’s rights bill.
Right to Evidence-Based Medical Intervention
No child should be denied medical treatment because a parent believes prayer can heal pneumonia or measles. The Supreme Court once held in a different context that, while “[p]arents may be free to become martyrs themselves [ , ] it does not follow they are free, in identical circumstances, to make martyrs of their children before they have reached the age of full and legal discretion when they can make that choice for themselves” (Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U.S. 158, 1944). This principle should be extended to health care. While an adult can choose to try to cure their cancer with prayer or a vegan diet, to sacrifice a child’s life on the altar of their parents’ beliefs is unconscionable.
Right to be Free of Child Abuse
We cannot allow parental right to be a cover for child abuse. Every child possesses an inherent right to be free from physical, sexual and emotional abuse, and severe neglect. The Supreme Court held in DeShaney v. Winnebago County that the Due Process Clause does not impose an affirmative federal constitutional duty on states to protect children from private harm, but it was equally clear that this is a constitutional floor, not a ceiling. What the federal Constitution does not require of states, it does not forbid them from choosing to do anyway. And where a state goes further, by, for example, affirmatively stripping law enforcement of the tools to intervene, as Idaho has done with SB 1329, it does not merely decline to protect; it manufactures the conditions for abuse. This should trigger DeShaney‘s majority’s state-created danger exception. The humanist position is unambiguous: the state must act to protect its most vulnerable residents. The constitution supports the state’s ability to protect children from abuse, whatever their familial situation. As the Supreme Court affirmed in Prince v. Massachusetts, ‘the family itself is not beyond regulation in the public interest, as against a claim of religious liberty.’ Legal sovereignty of a parent over a child must end where that child’s physical safety begins.
Right to a Basic Education
In Idaho, as well as other states hell-bent on protecting parental rights above all else, there is very little oversight over education once a child is not enrolled in a state public school. The landscape varies, but it is moving in the direction of fewer and fewer requirements – and the people who ultimately suffer are the very children proponents of parental rights claim they are ultimately trying to protect. Every child deserves the mental tools necessary to participate in a 2026 world. As the Supreme Court implied in Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972), children must receive a basic understanding of literacy, writing and mathematics to be self-sufficient citizens. In Pierce, the Court cautioned “that nothing [should] be taught which is manifestly inimical to the public welfare,” which must encompass the teaching of demonstrably false claims as facts (Pierce, 268 U.S. at 534). So, presumably, teaching creationism would not fly. And while the Supreme Court has stopped short of declaring education a fundamental right, it has recognized in Plyler v. Doe that education “provides the basic tools by which individuals might lead economically productive lives to the benefit of us all,” and that legislation directing “the onus of a parent’s misconduct against his children does not comport with fundamental conceptions of justice” (Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202, 221, 1982). A child who is denied a basic education by their parents’ ideological choices is no less harmed than one denied it by the state. And as the world has changed, these basic standards must be updated to fit the modern context.
Right to Decisions Commensurate with Capacity
Children grow. Their capacity for decision-making grows with them. The law must recognize that. As a child grows, society must give increased legal weight to the children’s capacity for making decisions. We already recognize that dichotomy in the abortion context, where some states review whether judicial bypass is appropriate to bypass parental consent and notice requirements. For example, in Virginia, to avoid requiring consent for an abortion, the court looks to see whether a minor has the maturity to provide consent for an abortion. To avoid requiring notice, the court must decide what would be in the best interest of the child. The principles are generally applicable: Once a child can understand the consequences of their decisions that deal with their health, getting a forensic exam after a sexual assault, accessing suicide prevention hotlines, of getting preventative care like HIV PrEP or vaccines, legislation should ensure that children can make decisions about things that directly affect their health care. And yes, that means some young people will choose not to get a vaccine or to get medical treatment of one kind or another, even when receiving said treatment would be in their best interest. One cannot have it both ways – either a young person has the ability to make certain kinds of decisions or they don’t. As the Supreme Court held in Planned Parenthood v. Danforth, “[c]onstitutional rights do not mature and come into being magically only when one attains the state-defined age of majority,” a child is a rights-bearing person at every stage of their development, not only upon turning eighteen (Planned Parenthood of Central Missouri v. Danforth, 428 U.S. 52, 74, 1976).
If the world was organized on humanist principles, the state would serve as an equalizer, to make sure that all children’s lives have a basic level of dignity and well-being. The “parental rights” movement takes the opposite approach. They don’t acknowledge that abuse exists, that medical neglect by a child’s family can prematurely end a child’s life, that giving parents unfettered control over their children’s education guarantees that some children will reach adulthood wholly unprepared for it. And yet, they also claim the higher ground on abortion and LGBTQ issues – to protect the children. The children are only worth protecting when doing so can score culture war points. Humanism should argue, as James G. Dwyer argues in “The Children We Abandon”in the North Carolina Law Review (Vol. 74, no.5, 1996), that parental rights should not be viewed as absolute. Instead, they should be viewed as child-rearing privileges contingent on the child’s well-being. After all, “[r]ecognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world” (“Convention on the Rights of the Child,” Preamble, G.A. Res. 44/25, U.N. Doc. A/RES/44/25, Nov. 20, 1989).
I urge humanist and secular readers to not allow the parental rights movement to claim a higher ground on children’s well being. Humanists can and must articulate a better answer: one grounded in the dignity of children and young people. There is a humanist vision for the relationship between the family and the state, and a children’s bill of rights can be a part of that vision: a bill that would actually protect children, acknowledge their humanity and open the “black box” of the family when necessary. We should not be afraid to declare clearly what has been true all along: Children are people, and it is past time that the law treats them as such.
