Grandparents' rights law is anti-family
Des Moines Register March 21, 2000
OPINION
Coalition for the Restoration of Parental
Rights ******* IOWA CHAPTER
I would like to urge all parents to carefully consider the impact the grandparents visitation law may have on your families. It is, without a doubt, emotionally devastating and a financial nightmare. I strongly oppose this law for many reasons.
Fit parents, whether married, single, divorced or widowed, should retain their fundamental right to guide their children to adulthood.
The law is a constitutional violation of parental rights and is protected against state intrusion. It's another loss of personal freedom and advocates arbitrary government control.
The courts are not equipped to dictate social interaction among family member.s
The law violates family privacy and is anti-family in nature.
Court action as a means of resolve, resolves nothing. It fosters resentment on both sides.
Forced grandparent visitation may cause the parent/child relationship to suffer by creating a conflict of loyalties with the child.
Granting grandparent visitation only validates all the wrongdoing by the grandparents, giving them freedom to continue their abhorrent behavior. In reality it only suits the grandparents' best interest, not that of the child.
The ambiguity of Iowa's code forces the courts to determine and even define unreasonable. Doesn't unreasonable simply mean without reason? Furthermore, allowing the courts to determine what is in the best interest of the child devalues the parents' decisions made in the best interests of their child.
Parents have a responsibility, which they cannot exercise without the parenting right that makes it possible. Grandparents, on the other hand, have been given a statutory right with NO responsibilites attached.
Third-party rights should never supercede parental rights unless a risk of immediate physical danger or harm to the child exists.