Baby DNA Rights Explained

Currently there are over 819,000 samples of Baby DNA kept by the Minnesota Department of Health without permission. This database has been kept in relative secrecy until, at that time a nurse, Twila Brase was first alarmed in 2003. Six years later, she’s president of the Citizens Council for Health Care, and has been trying to reach anyone in earshot who is willing to listen.

There is no arguing that hospitals save lives, and it is generally understood that taking five drops of blood from a newborn child to check for disease is beneficial. However, what the nurse frequently doesn’t even know about when taking that blood is that a bureaucrat extracts a DNA sample from that child.

This is where the Minnesota Department of Health severs itself from our property rights guarenteed under the Constitution, and our privacy protections guaranteed under Minnesota Genetic Privacy Law. This is also where I sever myself from the needs of the hospital, when it decides to serve the buerocrat before my newborn. Citizens should not have their intrinsic privacy and autonomy rights for their family infringed upon in secret or in public.

There is a legal solution overlooked by our local legistlators in congress that the majority of Minnesotans support. It's called called parental consent, and it allows the parent to choose whether to opt-in or opt-out of the database. The more the Minnesota Department of Health shares the public’s common sense of honor, the more willing the public would be to opt-in. I suspect that’s exactly what the peeping tom’s Minnesota Department of Health fears. The Minnesota Department of Health has calculated that keeping Minnesotans in the loop would hurt the prospects of their illegal databasing, therefore we are meant to be kept out of the loop. Frankly, if the peeping tom's at the Minnesota Department of Health wishes for that DNA information, they should first ask for consent, and if they do not get that consent they should withdraw.

If a citizen such as I would have to choose in the future between my privacy rights, and the safety of my newborn child, it would give me great pause. However, it would not take too long for me to remember a famous quote from Benjamin Franklin, “Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither.” Remembering that would garnish the courage for me to say to my nurse, “Thanks, but no thanks.” Discussing the issue at length with many people there are many more Minnesotans who share this view. How many of them feel the weight of a bureaucracy being pushed down upon their relationship with their doctor. Yet hearing this, the Minnesota Department of Health refuses to listen, and does not view the patient doctor relationship as sacred.

1. I do not embrace the State that uses coercion and deception as the branding mechanism in order to mark its citizens at birth.
2. I do not embrace the State that holds the patient doctor relationship hostage for its own aims.
3. I do not embrace the State that does not recognize my property as my own as soon as it finds a convenient morally relative argument.
4. I do not embrase the State that does not recognize my property rights as mine as soon as it decides its need trumps my rights.

   ---

5. I fear that State, because it is ultimately out of touch and transitioning into a Tyranny.

More information and a petition to the governor can be obtained at itsmydna.com. If so inclined, contact your local legislators and tell them that like (R) Rep. Tom Emmer, you oppose HF1760 which aims to negate our property and privacy rights.