Proclamation 5874 --
Child Health Day, 1988
By
the President of the
A
Proclamation
For
parents, nothing in life can be as important as knowing that the children God
gives them are healthy and free to live and grow up safe from harm. For 6
decades, the American people have set aside Child Health Day each year to
remind ourselves and the world that, as individuals and a Nation, we seek to
ensure the good health of each and every American child. Our national observance
of this day will fulfill that mission so long as we keep in mind our duty to
safeguard our children's physical well-being; to shelter their God-given
innocence; and to shield the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness that are theirs as Americans and as human beings.
These
duties are best met in the family, society's fundamental unit. But
responsibility for the health and safety of youngsters often requires the
assistance of the wider community, including, for example, the members of
private groups, voluntary organizations, and religious orders who care for
children; and government officials at the local, State, and Federal levels as
well. Since the early part of this century, the Federal government has worked
in partnership with all of these entities to protect the health and safety of
children.
Child Health Day, 1988, is a time for
reflection on what we have achieved -- and for rededication to tasks not yet
accomplished. We must continue to battle conditions such as family breakup,
poverty, and moral confusion that can cause health problems in children. We
must also fight infant mortality, drinking and driving, and problems that can
affect children both born and unborn, such as the HIV, poor eating habits,
smoking, illegal drug use and alcohol abuse.
We
must also reduce the incidence of teenage pregnancy -- as well as the spread of
venereal diseases and the HIV -- by giving young boys and girls
good example and solid teaching about affirming life and avoiding sexual
relations outside of marriage. And teenagers who do become pregnant need our
help as individuals, families, and communities, to see them through their
difficulties, not to condemn them or abandon them to the dead end of abortion.
We must also do a much better job of encouraging adoption as a compassionate
alternative to abortion.
Advances
in technology continue to help us save the lives of many fragile infants and to
rescue babies whose premature birth would once have meant certain death. We are
also more and more able to treat children in the womb for a variety of
illnesses and conditions. These developments demonstrate a stark contradiction
in one aspect of our national child health policies -- the social environment
that fosters often heroic efforts to save little ones whose parents want them,
but denies legal protection to the unborn whose parents do not want them. We
must restore the right to life and our respect for the dignity and worth of
every individual.
Our
success in caring for all of our children will continue to determine our
faithfulness to our heritage and our fate as a Nation. In our every endeavor,
let us pray as did the parent portrayed by the poet, ``From
cut and from tumble, from sickness and weeping, May God have my jewel this day
in His keeping.''
Now,
Therefore, I, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of America,
pursuant to a joint resolution approved on May 18, 1928, as amended (36 U.S.C.
143), do hereby proclaim Monday, October 3, 1988, as Child Health Day.
In
Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-ninth day of
September, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-eight, and of
the
Ronald
Reagan
[Filed with the Office
of the Federal Register,