Parental Rights or Children’s Safety? Proposition 15 Has the Makings of a Texas Tragedy

Texas has a constitutional amendment, Prop 15, on the November ballot that prioritizes parental control over child protection – with potentially dangerous consequences all across the country.

The Pendulum Over the Child’s Head

In the world of public policy, children are often invisible, which is another form of neglect.

Even when the issue is about children and the laws we pass shape the course of their lives, they are left entirely out of the conversation. Nowhere is this clearer than in debates over “parental rights,” where sweeping proposals are offered in the name of “parental rights” but with little thought as to how they may affect kids.

In the United States, child welfare policy is governed by a pendulum – swinging back and forth between parental rights and child protection. Sometimes the swing is warranted. Other times, it becomes a weapon.

When the pendulum swings too far toward state oversight, families are investigated and wrongly torn apart. For example, splitting parents from their children based on poverty (i.e., “neglect”) has been disastrous for child well-being. And when this is combined with poor federal policy, such as the denial of the Child Tax Credit to those who need it the most and the inadequacy of affordable housing, parents are often pushed into poverty. For far too many families, the combination of these policies leads to family separation.

Yet, when the pendulum swings too far in the other direction, the child can disappear entirely from the picture and be placed in grave danger. In some cases, the state becomes not a protector of children but an enforcer of parental control, even when that control is abusive, neglectful, or life-threatening. In a shocking number of states, “parental rights” has even meant that even rapists and serious criminals can claim “care” and “control” over their offspring.

Source: Prism article.

In states like Idaho, it has also meant that parents can deny their children life-saving medical treatment or that kids can be denied services from a suicide prevention hotline without parental consent.

Today, we’re seeing that swing play out in real time. In the United Kingdom, the government just announced a landmark reform to family law: ending the presumption that abusive parents are entitled to contact with their children. It’s a powerful recognition that parental status alone does not entitle someone to influence a child’s life if that influence puts them at risk.

In Texas, the pendulum is swinging the other way, and it has important consequences for children all across the United States. If Texas’s Proposition 15 is passed, it is likely to become a “copy and paste” act introduced in states across this country.

In Texas alone, cases are mounting – a 5‑year‑old tortured, a 9‑year‑old neglected after repeated investigations, a 4-year-old starved and beaten – all while being told the important issue is parental rights. These aren’t abstractions: they are children with real names, faces, and funerals.

• Mercedes Losoya, just five years old, was tortured to death in San Antonio, her body covered in hundreds of bruises and wounds after months of abuse by her mother’s boyfriend.

• HardiQuinn Hill, nine years old, died from chronic neglect, even after police, neighbors, and family members repeatedly raised alarms — and child welfare workers failed to intervene.

• Benjamin “Benji” Cevera, four years old, who was filmed begging his father for food, and died just days later from starvation and physical abuse

These children didn’t need more legal protections for the adults who hurt them.

They needed the state to protect and not abandon them. Proposition 15 would abandon even more children.

In England, A Shift Toward Protecting Children from Harm

Earlier this month, the United Kingdom took a decisive step toward child-centered justice. In a move shaped by heartbreak and driven by persistence, Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced a landmark reform to family law: courts will no longer presume that contact with both parents is automatically in a child’s best interest, particularly when one of those parents is abusive.

This reform was the result of tireless advocacy by Claire Throssell, whose two sons, Jack and Paul, were murdered by their father, who locked them in the attic and set fire to the house, during an unsupervised visit awarded by a family court. Claire spent over a decade demanding that policymakers listen: not just to grieving parents like her, but to the children who can no longer speak for themselves.

Starmer’s announcement captured this shift in moral clarity. As the Prime Minister wrote:

In the eleven years since her boys were tragically killed by their father, Claire Throssell has fought tirelessly to make sure no other child faces the same danger.

We’re taking action to protect children from abusive parents.

For Jack. For Paul. For every child.

This is what it looks like when children are placed at the center of policy. The UK is confronting a legal system that had, for too long, assumed that biological parenthood automatically equates to love, safety, care, and the best interests of children. It is a hard truth that some parents are monstrous to their children. And when the law gives them automatic access to inflict harm, it becomes complicit in that harm.

The new policy does not demonize parents. Rather, it acknowledges that contact with an abusive parent should not be presumed by default. It affirms that the state has a solemn duty: to protect children, especially when the people who are supposed to love them become the source of their greatest danger.

What makes the UK’s action remarkable, as it represents one of the rare moments when policymakers put the needs, concerns, and best interests of children first.

Texas could learn a great deal from this moment, and Texas voters have the opportunity to do the same by rejecting Proposition 15.

In Texas, A Constitutional Amendment That Ignores the Risks

While the UK is shifting toward child protection, Texas is barreling in the opposite direction.

Proposition 15, a proposed amendment to the Texas Constitution, would declare that parents have a “fundamental right to direct the upbringing, education, and care of their child.” At first glance, it sounds benign – even affirming. Who wouldn’t want parents directly involved in their children’s lives?

But constitutional language isn’t symbolic. It sets legal precedent, limits state action, and shifts the balance of power in ways that are hard to undo. And this proposal is so broadly written that it threatens to override essential protections for children.

For example, what happens when the parent is the problem?

That’s not a hypothetical. Doctors, educators, and child welfare professionals in Texas know exactly what happens when children are harmed by those who are supposed to protect them – and how the state often fails to intervene to protect children, even under current law.

In testimony before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee earlier this year, Dr. Eithan Haim, a pediatrician who worked at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, shared what too many child advocates already know:

In my extensive pediatric trauma experience at [Texas Children’s Hospital], I took care of dozens of children who suffered unfathomable abuse such as intentional starvation, cigarette burns, finger amputations, etc. I would find their abusers in their room the very next day. I did not go to CPS [Child Protective Services] because I never saw evidence that they actually protected children.

If Proposition 15 is inserted into the Texas Constitution, it will further elevate parental rights above all else, even if that parent is unfit, dangerous, or criminal. This threatens the health, education, safety, and well-being of far too many children.

Again, the language reads that a parent has the “fundamental right to exercise care, custody, and control of the parent’s child, including the right to make decisions concerning the child’s upbringing.”

First, even the definition of “parent” under Proposition 15 remains dangerously vague. Does it include only biological parents? What about adoptive parents, step-parents, or other guardians? Without precision, this amendment opens the door to chaos in custody disputes, education conflicts, and emergency care decisions – all at the expense of children’s well-being.

For example, can a parent in prison for murder overrule a grandparent guardian to deny his or her child a vaccine or life-saving chemotherapy simply because of this constitutional amendment? Could a rapist or pedophile demand joint custody of a child that was conceived as a consequence of sexual violence?

Furthermore, does the “fundamental right” for the “care”, “custody”, and “control” of a child include “decisions concerning the child’s upbringing” that allow the placement of a child in a cage, starvation of a child, or other decisions that threaten a child’s life?

These aren’t abstractions. They’re real-world consequences of constitutionalizing a one-sided version of “parental rights.”

The bottom line is this: children are not property. They are people, with their own needs, rights, and futures. Any law that elevates parental control without safeguarding children’s interests is not good family policy – it’s potentially dangerous and even fatal.

Lessons from Colorado: We’ve Been Here Before

If Texas voters feel uneasy about Proposition 15, they’re not alone and not the first.

Back in 1996, Colorado voters were asked to approve Amendment 17, a sweeping constitutional proposal to give parents the “inalienable right to direct and control the upbringing, education, values, and discipline of their children.” It was part of a broader push by national groups to enshrine parental rights in state constitutions. And early polling showed the amendment might pass easily.

Sound familiar?

But then something changed. A broad and bipartisan coalition – including educators, child welfare advocates, pediatricians, legal experts, and community leaders – raised the alarm.

They warned that the amendment’s language was dangerously vague, just like Texas’s Proposition 15 is. They asked many of the same questions, particularly those with respect to child safety.

In the end, Colorado voters rejected Amendment 17 by a margin of 57-43%, even after an initial wave of public support. It was a resounding message: constitutional amendments must be precise, deliberate, and focused on protecting the most vulnerable.

Legal scholar Linda Lane captured the stakes:

There are sufficient existing state and federal laws to protect parents and their fundamental liberty interest in parenting... and the potential for its harm to children is reason enough to oppose any such ratification.¹

Lane adds:

In all of the rhetoric of parental rights, there is little or no mention of the rights of children. Certainly, their rights to a safe, nonabusive, and enjoyable childhood environment should be a factor in the parent/child calculus.

Those are the lessons Texas should heed — just as the voters of Colorado did.

We’ve been here before, and voters chose to protect children from danger.

Today’s Proposition 15 in Texas is yesterday’s Amendment 17 in Colorado. The language is broad. The legal implications are murky and raise many questions. But worst of all, the risks to children are still very real.

In Texas, Pushback Has Begun

Despite Texas’s political climate and the surface-level appeal of affirming “parental rights,” Proposition 15 has not gone unchallenged. In fact, opposition is growing, and it spans a wide ideological and institutional spectrum.

The fact is that parents already have case law, statutes, including a Parents’ Bill of Rights protecting their role in their child’s upbringing.

The Houston Chronicle editorial board, not known for alarmist rhetoric, laid out a clear and measured case for voting no:

We’re generally against tying the hands of lawmakers in this way without a compelling reason. And in this case, with so much already favoring parents in Texas courts, we don’t see one.

This isn’t a radical critique. It’s a reminder that parental rights are already well protected in Texas and that constitutional amendments should solve real problems, not hypothetical ones. The U.S. Supreme Court has affirmed parental rights in several landmark decisions,² but it has clarified that these rights are not unlimited.³

A growing number of conservative voices in Texas have opposed the constitutional amendment. For example, according to Accountability Matters:

The phrase “care, custody, and control” and the broad reference to “decisions concerning the child’s upbringing” are undefined, creating ambiguity that courts or state agencies could exploit.

The group’s concern is not about how it impacts children, as I focus on here, but how the ambiguity might threaten parents with an “undefined and narrow interpretation of traditional values, which [would] limit the rights of parents whose approaches deviate from the state’s view of ‘traditional’ norms.”

In short, this is not a “consensus” constitutional amendment. Its supporters speak in sweeping terms about freedom and family. But its critics – from child advocates to pediatricians to teachers to legal scholars to conservative groups – understand what’s really at stake: the rights, protections, and futures of Texas children and parents.

Who Speaks for the Child? Medical and Legal Warnings

For those unfamiliar with the brutal realities of child abuse, it’s easy to imagine that parents always act in their children’s best interests. But as Dr. Haim’s testimony underscores, we should be careful in appeasing adults who already have power rather than safeguarding children who have none.

That’s why legal scholar Samantha Godwin offers such a vital warning:

When evaluating the extent of parents’ legal rights, we should not merely consider how ideal parents exercise their power to provide the effective care and guidance children need. The extent of what the law enables imperfect parents to do to their children must also be taken into account... Thinking only in terms of how the best parents conduct themselves is a mistake; it is also necessary to account for what the worst parents can get away with.⁴

And that is exactly the mistake Proposition 15 makes.

By treating parental rights as absolute – without safeguards or clear limits – Proposition 15 threatens to turn the Constitution into a blunt instrument of control, even in situations where intervention is desperately needed. It asks us to design a legal system for ideal parents, while ignoring how that system will inevitably be used and abused by the worst ones.

The question is not whether most parents are good. They are.

The question is: what happens to children when the law empowers and provides legal protection to the bad ones?

Vote NO on Proposition 15 – For Mercedes. For HardiQuinn. For Benjamin. For Every Child.

When Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced the UK’s family law reform, he invoked two names: Jack and Paul – the sons of Claire Throssell, murdered by their father during a court-ordered visitation. The law they inspired will help ensure that no child is forced into contact with someone who has already proven they are capable of harm.

Texas has children like Jack and Paul, too.

Children like Mercedes, HardiQuinn, and Ronni, whose lives were extinguished – not because there were too many limits on parental rights, but because there were too few.

Proposition 15 would further elevate parental control to a “fundamental right,” giving it the highest legal protection under the state constitution, while diminishing the ability of children to be safe, heard, or protected.

And it would do this in a state where, as the Houston Chronicle and Accountability Matters already note, parents already have extensive legal rights. For example, earlier this year, Texas passed a statutory parental rights bill.

In the end, Proposition 15 is not about freedom. It is about consolidating power – and placing a legal shield in the hands of someone capable of extreme harm.

Good parents do not need Proposition 15. Abusive parents might use it. And the children who suffer the consequences – who risk losing access to health care, education, safety, and justice – will have no say.

Let’s be clear: parenting is not about ownership. And the Texas Constitution should not be weaponized as a tool to shield harm and abuse from accountability. As Samantha Godwin reminds us, the legal system must be built not for the best of us, but for how the worst might exploit it.

The UK has decided that the rights of children to safety and dignity must come first. Texas now faces its own test.

Vote NO on Proposition 15.
For Mercedes. For HardiQuinn. For Benjamin.
For every Texas child in danger.

1. Lane, L. L. (1998). The Parental Rights Movement. University of Colorado Law Review. 69:3, 825-849.

2. See, for example, Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390 (1923); Pierce v. Society of the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, 268 U.S. 510 (1925); Santosky v. Kramer, 455 U.S. 745, 748 (1982).

3. See, for example, Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U.S. 158 (1944); Tinker v. Des Moines 393 U.S. 503 (1969); Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202 (1982).

4. Godwin, S. (2015). Against Parental Rights. Columbia Human Rights Law Review, 47(1), 1-83.