Senate set to vote on UN disability treaty, sides divided on effects on parental rights
The U.S. Senate is set to vote Wednesday on ratification of the United Nation’s Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), which some critics warn could undermine parental rights.
photo/ Shealah Craighead
36 Republicans in September signed a letter opposing any action on international treaties during the post-election session. The opposition has more than enough to defeat the treaty, which needs a two-thirds majority to be ratified.
“There is no American living here in the U.S. whose life will change one iota because the United States joins this treaty,” Steven Groves of the Heritage Foundation tells NRO. “So why the heck are we going to join it?”
“If the U.S. Senate were to ratify the CRPD, this would give the United Nations the power to influence and change domestic law and threaten parental rights and homeschool freedom,” HSLDA Director of Federal Relations William Estrada wrote in a Nov. 19 email to supporters.
“We don’t think that it’s appropriate for the United States to be answering to a U.N. convention based in Geneva, Switzerland, when we are the leader of the world on this issue, as we are on so many other issues,” Mike Lee tells NRO.
Liberal Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank claimed that the treaty does not undermine parental authority and accused the critics of opposing the disabled and propagating conspiracy theories.
“Their concerns, rather, came from the dark world of U.N. conspiracy theories. The opponents argue that the treaty, like most everything the United Nations does, undermines American sovereignty – in this case via a plot to keep Americans from home-schooling their children and making other decisions about their well-being.
“The treaty does no such thing,” Milbank wrote.
