Big Brother : Screening Pregnancies

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ILLINOIS launches compulsory mental health screening

for children and pregnant women

 

The Leader-Chicago Bureau

 

 

CHICAGO-- Monday, July 19, 2004

 

This week, a series of public forums on a program

requiring all pregnant women and children through age

18 years to be tested for mental health needs is being

held this week in five different locations statewide.

 

Orwellian program in Illinois seeks to place all

pregnant women and children through compulsory

screening for " mental defectives. " -

 

Onegroup of parents learned about the state's plans to

proceed with this program and on Monday issued an

alarm asking for parents and citizens concerned about

the new program to voice their opinions at the forums.

 

" We're moving toward social training over academic

training with this program, " Larry Trainor, a Mt.

Prospect parent of four children and a contact for

Citizens Commission on Human Rights, based in Los

Angeles,said today.

 

" Since psychiatric involvement in education, SAT

scores have gone down for the past few decades.

Evaluating mental conditions is not based on

scientific evidence, it's subjective, " he said.

 

The $10 million plan for the set up of the Children's

Mental Health Act of2003 is being considered at this

week's public forums starting Monday,July 18 in

Champaign.

 

Signed into law, the bill passed the Illinois General

Assembly last spring, sponsored in the House by State

Representatives Julie Hamos (D-Evanston) and Patricia

Bellock (R-Westmont). State Senator Maggie Crotty

(D-Oak Forest) and Susan Garrett (D-Highwood)

shepherded the legislation through the Senate.

 

The legislation passed the House with a 107 to 5 vote,

and the Senate unanimously.

 

" What if they find a student has a math disorder, a

reading disorder. Would that be a mental health

disorder, one that would cause the parents to put

their children with a drug for a condition they may or

may not have? " Trainor asked.

 

The mental health program will develop a mental health

system for " all children ages 0-18 years, " provide for

screening to " ensure appropriate and culturally

relevant assessment of young children's social and

emotional development with the use of standardized

tools. "

 

Also, all pregnant women will be screened for

depression and thereafter following her baby's birth,

up to one year. Follow-up treatment services will also

be provided.

 

Trainor said that he is trying to get parents and

citizens out to voice their opinion about the new

program.

 

Apparently, children's mental health will be assessed

along with their academic standards in the new

proposed testing. The Illinois State Board of

Education has been given the responsibility to develop

the appropriate tests, according to last year's

legislation.

 

The Task Force hosting the public forums this week are

to send are commendation to Governor Blagojevich by

the end of the summer,according to the Act (HB 2900).

 

 

The above is Copyright & copy; 2004 the Illinois

Leader,

 

This is a Developing story . . . Thank you to We Hold

These Truths for alerting us

 

The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions

WHY YOU NEED TO BE CONCERNED

Commentary by Laura Dawn Lewis

 

 

Ifyou haven't noticed yet, the majority of new laws

and policies beingimplemented are sold on fear through

the necessity of good intentionsand as a way to

protect you by allowing your government to take care

of you, as if the government is a better steward of

your body, soul and mind. Each is euphemized to seem

harmless and necessary. Every time a law is passed,

you give up a portion of your freedom. This is a

fact. Some laws are necessary to allow society to

function toward a common good. Laws like, murder is

bad. Stealing is unjust and beating a child

unacceptable. These create the commonalities that

define civilization.

 

Since September 11th, 2001 our governments, state,

local and federal continue to push through

resolutions, legislation and ideas directly in

contradiction to the rules we've already established

for America, set forth in our Constitution. In

effect, each of these chips at our civil liberties,

forcing us further away from our values and

principles. This law in Illinois represents one such

example. Without a doubt the women pushing it through

created it with the best of intentions; yet anytime

something becomes mandatory, intentions become abuses.

The following are the key reasons I believe the

citizens of Illinois and the rest of us in the United

States must object to this legislation. If we allow it

to pass in one state without confronting it, others

will follow.

 

1) This is profiling:

 

Segmenting society based upon subjective ideals, this

opens up the ability to create a caste system based

upon the mental health results of women and children.

This means your child's future, the classes he or she

takes and the opportunities open to them could be

limited simply based upon test results at a given

point in time. It segments society into mentally

healthy and various degrees of mentally unhealthy.

The potential for abuse of this information is

immense.

 

2) It is compulsory,

meaning you do not have a choice:

 

The mental health of your children, yourself if female

or your wife will now be on state records. Once in

state records, you now open yourself up to abuse based

upon these tests and increase the likelihood of such

information being used to screen for employment,

benefits or privileges such as a driver's license,

college admissions, retirement or healthcare.

 

3) The state determines whether

you are mentally healthy or not:

 

This is not a good idea.

 

For example: A close friend of mine was thrown into

an alcohol treatment program ten years ago after a

20-minute diagnosis. Her life was falling apart and

she was sinking into deep depression, prompting the

visit to the Psychiatrist. The defining factor being

she mistook the shakes one gets from drinking too much

coffee or taking diet pills for delirium tremors,

which she didn't even know existed until she arrived

at the treatment facility. The question asked, have

you ever had the shakes? She answered yes thinking of

ephedrine and caffeine. She also had driven twice

after drinking and engaged in a one-night stand,

answering yes to the question, " Have you ever done

something you regretted after drinking? " She did not

have a problem with alcohol, but was not allowed to

leave the treatment center until she confessed her

alcoholism. At twenty-seven, she'd only been drunk

nine times in her life, all during college. Once sent

to a treatment center the insurance company required

completion and sign off by the facility before they

would pay. After thirty-days she finally made up a

story and got out.

 

Her real problem was the fact she had been raped and

molested several times in her teens and had been

suppressing it for twelve years, which did come out in

her first step. She lived abroad at this time and

women didn't have the same rights as they do in the

United States so she was told it was her fault and

silenced, thus allowing the abuse to continue

unchecked. Sixty-eight handwritten pages delved into

this. Now she knew the problem causing her

depression, anger and erratic behavior. But the

treatment center made her write a new first step

because hers didn't deal with alcohol abuse. When she

insisted alcohol wasn't involved, which it wasn't;

they insisted she was in denial. Eventually she

figured it out and that first step did allow her to

realize what was really going on with her, but her

employer, insurance company and doctors now had her

flagged as an alcoholic and this designation has

haunted her ever since all because she answered

questions according to her experience and they

interpreted according to theirs.

 

This is why mental health is subjective, not

objective. The diagnosis is only as good as the

information given, the context taken and the skill of

the mental health professional.

 

4) This is a violation of your privacy.

 

Your children do not have a choice; the state decides

if they are " healthy " and channels them into programs

it deems appropriate. One example of how this may work

is something I went through in high school when I was

wrongly channeled based upon aptitude and personality

tests, which I document in this essay on The Gifts of

Math. With this legislation, even adult women, you do

not have a choice. By simply becoming pregnant you

give up your right to personal privacy and become part

ofthe system.

 

5) It is unconstitutional

 

The Bill of Rights guarantees every American and

person living in the United States the right to be

secure in their own person and protected against

unreasonable search and seizure, this includes thought

police. One of the dangers of our invading Iraq as a

pre-emptive deterrent is we have now established in

our society a precedence, a Minority Report scenario

by which we engage and justify based on possibility

rather than addressing the action after it occurs. The

fear of maybe drives this. It's an irrational fear.

 

THE PRICE OF IRRATIONAL FEAR

 

Last year 43,220 people died in US traffic accidents

and over 195,000 deaths due to hospital error. Do we

wage a war on prescription mix-ups, unsafe driving or

medicalmis diagnosis, a real threat to Americans? No,

the state of Illinois opens up its women and children

to more potential hospital mix-ups and we wage a war

on international terrorism which killed 0 people in

the United States during 2002 and 2004. It killed less

than twenty in 2003 with the DC Sniper case. We punish

based upon the 'what if', rather than holding

accountability only to those who do. This mental

health screening is a personal pre-emptive strike

aimed at women and children, a collective punishment

for all to find the one Andrea Yates or Eric Harris

and Dylan Klebold among us.

 

In return for this " safety " , we lay our rights down

and trample them over the fear of what might happen

but probably won't. This is not what the United States

is about and we're seeing more and more legislation

like this which strips us of rights, categorizes us

and channels us into different risk areas including

CAPPS II, The Trusted Traveler, Homeless tagging with

RFID's and Mexico's doing of the same with its

judicial workers. Of course, do not forget the

Patriot Act and Patriot Act II.

 

This is what happens when people become too afraid to

deal with the issues causing problems, willingly

sacrificing their rights to self-determination over to

a government whose sole purpose is to protect itself.

George Washington warned us of this. Henry David

Thoreau warned us of this. George Orwell warned us of

this. President Eisenhower warned us of this and

people like Patrick J. Buchanan, Ralph Nader and

Karen Kwiatkowski continue to warn us. Unfortunately

the reality seems to fall on deaf ears. One of the

results of this is the above legislation in Illinois,

no doubt one day coming to a state near you.

 

RelatedStory Offsite:

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August 6, 2004 By Chico ER (California)

Federally subsidized law enforcement now blur the

difference between terrorism and crime watch.

 

 

Without Justice, there is JUST_US!

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