A few days ago, The New York Timesran a storydocumenting that Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) has separated 700 children from their parents when they surrender themselves to seek asylum or are apprehended by ICE. The children—100 of whom are under the age of four—are sent to facilities often across the country from their parents, with whom they may be allowed sporadic phone contacts every few weeks or months. The Times documented the story of one 18-month old separated from his mother.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has confirmed that the number of children sent to shelters apart from their parent or parents is indeed 700. Perhaps HHS can produce a study of how such practices promote the health of children, while ICE can deliver a report on how the 100 children under four pose a threat to national security.
Yesterday, in a demonstration of what's recently been termed “intersectionality,” but more fundamentally demonstrates simple humanity, Planned Parenthood condemned the practice for all the reasons it should be condemned. “ICE's decision to remove protections for parents and their children is a stunning example of the Trump-Pence administration's hypocrisy when it comes to its so-called ‘family values,'” Planned Parenthood Executive Vice-President Dawn Laguens said in a statement the organization released. “It is clear that rolling back these common sense protections for children and their families will only lead to more families being torn apart. … It is unconscionable that children as young as under four years old will be robbed of the opportunity to grow up with their parents and potentially without any plan for their own care in place.”
To its critics, Planned Parenthood presents a threat to the sanctity of the family and the parent-child relationship. In fact, Planned Parenthood at its very essence seeks to create healthy families where all children are wanted and loved, and its statement yesterday makes even clearer who in America actually upholds family values and who mocks and destroys them.
