Veto GA HB 1058

by Sue Ella Deadwyler

More than 50 years ago, the Georgia General Assembly gave the Department of Public Health authority to provide confidential "family planning services" to anyone upon request, regardless of age or marital status.

With the law on their side, public health clinics readily provided confidential "family planning" services (contraceptives, etc.) to minors, and, by doing so, tacitly endorsed fornication for all ages, including children. Those services to minors became more convenient when school-based clinics decided to do the same, and added off-campus referrals. Result: Some pregnant students were taken on "field trips" to get abortions … all without parental knowledge or consent.

So, for over half-a-century, in matters of sexual activity, the State of Georgia has progressively taken more and more control over children by interfering with parental authority. That’s happening again, right now.

On February 22nd, Representative Betty Price introduced H.B. 1058. She was sworn in July 20, 2015 to fill the vacancy left when Representative Harry Geisinger passed away last year. She is an anesthesiologist and, no doubt, her medical perspective prompted her to introduce this bill to drastically change the AIDS law as it affects children and families.

Currently in Georgia, a child of any age may request and personally consent to receive medical care and surgery for any venereal disease. However, that consent does not apply to AIDS, since current law in Georgia does NOT define HIV/AIDS as a venereal disease. Under-age consent for treatment and surgery for venereal disease is as legally binding as though the child had reached the age of majority, and current law does not allow anyone to supersede that consent.

H.B. 1058 would add HIV to the list of diseases for which children can personally consent for confidential medical care and surgery. Then the bill repeals Georgia law mandating that confidential AIDS information shall be disclosed to the infected minor’s parent and replaces it with "AIDS confidential information may be disclosed to such person’s parent."

H.B. 1058 passed the House 169-0, and at seven o’clock Wednesday night the Senate passed it 46-7. Unless the governor vetoes it, H.B. 1058 becomes law July 1st and, once again, parental authority over their minor offspring will be transferred to government employees. That just happened, despite the fact that neither government nor the medical profession is ordained by God to nullify parental authority over their children. If anybody in the world needs to know that a minor child is infected with AIDS, it’s the parent.

Ask the governor to uphold parental authority and veto H.B. 1058. His number is 404 656-1776.

For Georgia Insight I’m Sue Ella Deadwyler, your Capitol correspondent.