If talk show host Geraldo Rivera had his way, couples considering having a child would be required to get licensed by the government.
On his Friday radio program, he cited the case of a Brooklyn mother suspected of killing her 3-year-old daughter and proclaimed:
I swear to God, you talk about sickos, you talk about sickos. You should need to have a license to have a child. You should be vetted. I think I can't stand these stories. I've covered so many of these toddler-torture murders. It's just something that is unbelievable.
While Rivera is right to be appalled by the case, he later went on to say the government can't do much of anything right.
Newsbusters' Jack Coleman posted his remarks:
You know, I like the idea of consumer protection, this new agency, for example, but I can just see what's going to happen. You're going to have all the secretaries that campaigned for Obama in this administration or Bush in the last administration or Romney or Obama or whoever it's going to be going forward, they're all going to get those coveted jobs, they're going to be assistant secretary to the secretary of the deputy of the this and that, and it's all going to be our tax money. It used to be, when I was a younger man, I used to think, you know, you know, let's throw money at this problem, let's fix this problem. And it's just when see the way government operates, government can do no right, almost.
Later that day, however, he defended Casey Anthony in a discussion with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly.
Brian Maloney of Radio Equalizer wrote:
NOW we know why Geraldo Rivera was keen on adding a radio show to his schedule: so he could promote two opposing viewpoints on the same issue!
Within a period of less than 12 hours the King of All Media Hackery jumped on Bill O'Reilly for being much too critical of (insert your own descriptive language here) Casey Anthony, but then told radio listeners he advocates government licensing and "vetting" of all prospective parents in America.
In 1961 Frederick S. Jaffe, then vice president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA), sent a memorandum to Bernard Barelson, president of the Population Council, in which he proposed various measures to reduce U.S. fertility.
Social constraints would include postponing or avoiding marriage, altering the image of the ideal family size, compulsory sex education and family limitation, encouraging increased homosexuality, encouraging women to work and putting fertility control agents in the water supply.
Economic deterrents would include a marriage tax and child tax, taxing the married more than single people, removing parental tax exemption, additional taxes on parents with more than one or two children in school, reducing paid maternity leave, reducing children's or family allowances, giving bonuses for delayed marriage, eliminating welfare payments after the first two children, requiring women to work and providing few child care facilities.
Social controls would include compulsory abortion for out–of–wedlock pregnancies, compulsory sterilization after the second child, confining childbearing to only a limited number of adults, licensing for parenting, discouraging private home ownership and no longer awarding public housing based on family size.
Other measures would include payments to encourage sterilization, contraception and abortion, allowing abortion and sterilization on demand, allowing contraceptives to be distributed non–medically, improving contraceptive technology, making contraceptives accessible to all and making family planning a core element of maternal health care.
According to Dr. Habiger, the idea of licensing reduces human beings to "things" like a "herd of cattle."
Licensing also gives the government more control over the individual.
He continues:
Children must not be sacrificed to the ideology, or idolatry, of population control. Children are human beings, and we cannot manipulate them. Parents only cooperate with God, and even then only in a very limited sense. Children are the greatest gift God can give to parents. Population controllers would reduce them to hungry mouths on two legs.
Parental licensing is a direct violation of the God–given rights of parents. If adults abuse their parental rights, the solution is not to be found in licensing. The fully human and effective corrective measures are such things as teaching chastity to young people and young couples, training in self–control and self–mastery, explaining the mystery of love as self–giving, emphasizing commitment in marriage, and valuing children as gifts from God, equal in every sense in the eyes of God.
Maloney asks:
In Geraldo Bizarro World, it's give Casey the benefit of the doubt, while real mothers and fathers are guilty until proven innocent. Could anything be nuttier?
Coleman responds: "Rivera passing himself off as a conservative comes to mind."
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