Politics
Friday January 19, 2007
See today's LifeSiteNews stories
California Congresswoman Wants Spanking Made a Criminal Offence on Par with Child Abuse
By Cassidy Bugos
SAN FRANCISCO, January 19, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A California congresswoman has announced she is drafting a bill that would outlaw the spanking of any child under the age of three.
Sally Lieber, D-Mountain View, says the bill will be written broadly, to ban “any striking of a child, any corporal punishment, smacking, hitting, punching, any of that.”
Lieber says she would like to see spanking treated as a class 3 misdemeanor child abuse, punishable by up to a year in jail or a fine of up to $1000 – although she admitted that one legal expert advising her doubts that first time offenders could be asked to do anything more than attend parenting classes.
Public opinion of the proposed bill appears skeptical at best. A January 18 poll of 500 Bay Area adults conducted by Survey USA showed 57% opposed to the ban, and 11% undecided.
Even parents who say they do not spank their own children are nonetheless wary of the government enforcing their decision, and certainly don’t want to see ordinary discipline within the home being grouped together with child abuse.
Besides, a San Francisco mother of a one-year-old girl told the pollsters: “There are cases of child abuse, and those need to be addressed . . . [But] I don’t know if this law would help those children.”
Although both public and congressional opinion appears initially unfavorable, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has expressed guarded interest in the bill.
“I just want to find out from [Lieber] exactly the way she envisions it and to enforce it and what the whole thing is about . . . anytime we try to pass laws that say you’ve got to protect kids, it’s in general always good. So we have to find about [sic] more about it.”
The governor said frankly that he was spanked often as a child, and expressed no bitterness. “I grew up, I got smacked about everything. That was just the way Austria worked.”
Lieber, hearing about the governor’s initial reception of her proposal, thanked him and expressed her condolences.
“My heart goes out to him to hear he was beaten; that’s just not right.”
Although no U.S. state has a prohibition on corporal punishment of children, since 1979 more than a dozen European countries have outlawed spanking in response to mounting pressure from the UN, which has repeatedly called for a global criminalization of all corporal punishment of children – to be imposed irrespective of parental beliefs about the authentic well-being of the child.
See related LifeSiteNews coverage:
UN Continues to Push for Criminalization of Spanking
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/jul/05072105.html
United Nations Insists Japan, Armenia and Guyana Criminalize Spanking by Parents
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2004/feb/04020403.html
Canadian Liberal Senator Seeks to Criminalize Spanking as a Form of Discipline
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/jun/05060806.html
Northern Irish Parents Who “Smack” to be Criminalized
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/sep/06091208.html
House of Lords Compromises on Banning Traditional Parenting – Spanking by Parents
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2004/jul/04070607.html
Back to TopSHARE THIS STORY: E-mail Print Newsvine Digg Reddit Del.icio.us Facebook
Latest Headlines
- Phill Kline Fights Critical Primary Campaign to Keep Planned Parenthood Case Alive - Asks Pro-Life Movement for Help
- Catholic University of San Diego Changes Mind - Rejects Radical Non-Christian Feminist For Theology Chair
- Traditional Anglican Bishops of Canada Protest Giving Order of Canada to Abortionist Morgentaler
- McCain Takes Obama to Task on Abortion, Still Defends Embryo Destroying Research
- Is the Pro-life Movement Too Christian? - Letters to the Editor for Friday, July 18, 2008
- London Times Runs Article Promoting Incest
- San Jose Professor Fired for Answering Question about Genetics and Homosexuality
- Dutch Replace Maiden Name with "Birth Name" to Accommodate Homosexual "Marriage"
- Spanish Euthanasia Advocates Launch Legalization Campaign
- NJ Assemblyman Proposes Legislation that Could Fund Embryonic Research through Back Door
- Same-sex "Marriage" Will Not be Counted in 2010 U.S. Census
- Canadian Politicians Take Part in Toronto's Raunchy Gay Pride Parade
- Homosexual High School Clubs Increase Risk of Suicide says Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays
- LifeSiteNews.com NewsBytes for July 18, 2008
Most Read this Week
- Death Wish: The Impending Suicide of a Once Great Nation
- Virgin Mobile Solicits Youth to Strip for Charity, Posts Videos on Website
- US Pediatric Nursing Journal Toys with Infanticide
- Priest Expert Says Infanticide is 50 Years Away from Being Normalized
- Knights of Columbus Calls on All 230,000 Members to Demand Morgentaler Award be Revoked
- "Premature Sexualisation" Pushing Young Girls into Depression and Self-Harm: New Study
- Norway Trial Court Finds Missionaries Guilty for Spreading Gospel
- Success: After Public Exposure, Psychiatrist Quits Signing Off on Late Term Abortion
- San Jose Professor Fired for Answering Question about Genetics and Homosexuality
- Why Is the Pro-Life Movement So Christian, and Should it be?
MORE NEWS: 
LifeSiteNews.com Home Page Last 10 Days Archives Special Reports
Copyright © LifeSiteNews.com. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives License. You may republish this article without request provided the content is not altered and it is clearly attributed to "LifeSiteNews.com". Any Internet re-publishing of original LifeSiteNews articles MUST additionally include a live link to www.LifeSiteNews.com. Republishing of articles on LifeSiteNews that have come from other news sources as noted is subject to the conditions of those sources.