Does the Child Belong to the State?

It is the Christian view of parental rights and duties which is here given. It is presented under the supposition, that, however great in these United States the diminution of Christians in point of numbers, there may be left enough to constitute an important part of the population, with rights warranted by the natural, the divine, and the common law, worthy of consideration. The doctrine coming into vogue, that the child belongs to the State, is the dressing up of an old skeleton of Spartan Paganism, with its hideousness dimly disguised by a thin cloaking of Christian morality. The most despotic governments of Europe illustrate the fruits of the doctrine, by making every one of their subjects an armed soldier for the butchering of fellow creatures in neighboring States, under the forms of legalized warfare.