Parker's dad urges caution on child bills

SALT LAKE CITY — As Utah legislators, drawing on the celebrated Parker Jensen case, rush to give parental rights supremacy over long-standing child-welfare laws, one important figure in the debate is urging caution: Parker's father.

Daren Jensen, who successfully fought the state's efforts to gain custody and force chemotherapy on his 12-year-old boy for a disputed cancer last summer, paid his first visit to the Legislature last week.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Jensen made clear he had reservations about some of the dozens of proposals in the works that would tip the balance in favor of parental rights over the power of the Division of Child and Family Services.

Jensen wasn't yet taking a stand. "It's not my job to come up here and change the world."

He also wasn't discussing any particular bills, but he said, "Those people that truly are abusing their children, we can't swing the pendulum too far the other way."

The Utah Senate voted 23-6 on Thursday to approve a bill that goes to the heart of the Jensen case, yet invokes some of the doubts that nag Jensen.

Senate Bill 90 gives "competent" parents near-absolute power over medical decisions for their children, including the power to grant or withhold lifesaving medical treatment. All parents would be considered competent unless proven incompetent beyond a reasonable doubt, which would all but eliminate medical neglect as a cause of action in juvenile courts.

Another bill would second-guess the child-welfare agency by requiring it to prove serious danger to a child's safety or health before the child is taken from a family. That could prevent caseworkers from taking action in an emergency.

Other measures promise to restructure the agency and juvenile court in parents' favor.

Richard Anderson, director of the Division of Child and Family Services, said lawmakers are looking for trouble trying to write into law prescriptions for judgment calls his caseworkers have to make daily.

"There's so many bills up here going in various directions," Anderson said. "I see no strategy, no plan, nothing that fits together."

Jensen, no fan of the child-welfare agency, agrees on that point.

On a visit of the House floor, Jensen said his now 13-year-old son was "doing great" and attending school, where he's writing up reports about some legislators' bills for a contemporary affairs component of his education.