State of Parental Rights Comes to the EPPiC Broadcast

Last month, the Parental Rights Foundation proudly announced the release of our first-ever State of Parental Rights in America (SOPRA) publication. Today, we are thrilled to bring it to the EPPiC Broadcast.

EPPiC stands for “Empowering Parents, Protecting Children,” and the EPPiC Broadcast is the official podcast of the Parental Rights Foundation. Each week, I host a half-hour conversation with a scholar, lawyer, or thought leader in the realm of parental rights.

This season, we have featured Kelly Fong and Frank Edwards, Vernadette Broyles, Will Estrada, Sharon Balmer-Cartagena, Alex Cinney and Toia Potts, David Kelly, Layal Bou Harfouch, Allison Green and Natalece Washington, and our new board chairman, William Wagner.

Topics ranged from Fong and Edwards’ recent study on the connection between child abuse mortality rates and the number of children taken into foster care (spoiler: there is none!), to a discussion of parental rights cases then before the U.S. Supreme Court, to homeschool freedom, to the benefits of pre-petition counsel for parents, to children’s counsel in CPS cases.

Now we’re finishing our twelfth season with two of the authors from this year’s SOPRA publication.

May 12: Joyce McMillan

The May 12 episode features Joyce McMillan, a left-leaning thought leader and parent activist, whose SOPRA article, “Common Sense Guardrails for CPS,” we unpack on the show. We discuss Joyce’s assertion that Child Protective Services, or CPS, is a carceral apparatus, not a social service system, and that as such, it should be subject to the same due process restrictions as law enforcement. 

Joyce also shares stories of parents caught in the system, and how recent legislative efforts in New York state are starting to move the needle in favor of keeping families free from unnecessary investigations and intrusions. 

Joyce is a straight shooter who turned her own tragic experience with the system into a thirty-year service to similarly-situated families. As the founder and executive director of Just Making a Change for Families (JMAC for Families), she has helped countless families navigate the treacherous waters of a CPS investigation while lending her voice to so many more. I am honored to have her on our Board of Advisors, and it was a privilege to speak to her for the EPPiC Broadcast. 

I hope you’ll take a few minutes this week to hear what she had to say.

May 19: Emilie Kao

Then on May 19, we’ll feature Emilie Kao, (pronounced “Gow,” rhymes with “now”) a conservative scholar and attorney, whose SOPRA article, “Preserving Childhood: Dependency, Consent, and Parental Rights in Healthcare,” fuels our conversation. Emilie shares with me how the “mature minor” doctrine arose in the twentieth century and why it should be discarded in favor of a return to the “parental presumption” that it replaced. It’s a move that would have far-reaching policy implications, but for those who support parental rights, Emilie says, it’s the right thing to do. Children, she says, are not yet ready to make such serious decisions on their own, and parents are their best and surest source of guidance.

As senior counsel and vice president of advocacy strategy for Alliance Defending Freedom, Emilie is an eminent scholar in the area of parental rights, having professional experience at Heritage Foundation, the Office of International Religious Freedom at the U.S. Department of State, and even at the United Nations in Geneva. Now we are honored to have her on our Board of Advisors. 

Emilie has spoken on the role of the family before the United Nations in New York and in Geneva, and before the U.S. Congress in Washington. Next week, I hope you’ll tune in to hear her unpack a bit of family policy just for us in this one-on-one conversation. 

It was a privilege to host her on the EPPiC Broadcast.

What’s Next?

After Emilie’s episode, the EPPiC Broadcast will take a break for the summer, starting work in just the next few weeks to bring you new and engaging episodes starting again in September.

Please take a moment to share the EPPiC Broadcast with your friends and family who can benefit from serious discussion about the need for parental rights protection in law and policy. And consider making a donation to keep the program on the air. (Like all of the Parental Rights Foundation’s work, the EPPiC Broadcast is completely donor supported.)

As always, thank you for standing with us, and with these thought leaders from both sides of the political aisle, in protecting children by empowering parents.