The Origins of Birth Registration – It’s not what you think.

The Sheppard-Towner Mater­nity Act was “for the pro­mo­tion, the wel­fare and hygiene of mater­nity and infancy and for other pur­poses,” It was passed with a vote of 63 to 7, and by the house with a vote of 279 to 39, and was finally signed by the pres­i­dent and became law on Nov. 23, 1921. The act pro­vided for the cur­rent fis­cal year (1922) $10,000 for each state accept­ing the pro­vi­sions of the act, and addi­tional sum of $1,000,000.

      The bill was a direct out­growth of a nine year study made by the “Fed­eral Children’s Bureau.” Note the Bureau was not the fed­eral bureau for chil­dren but the bureau of the fed­eral chil­dren. This act and the accep­tance of its ben­e­fits by the states cre­ated the “United States birth reg­is­tra­tion area.“⁴⁴

      “(2) Birth Reg­is­tra­tion Doc­u­ment. The Social Secu­rity Admin­is­tra­tion (SSA) may enter into an agree­ment with offi­cials of a State… to estab­lish, as part of the offi­cial birth reg­is­tra­tion process, a pro­ce­dure to assist SSA in assign­ing social secu­rity num­bers to new­born chil­dren. Where an agree­ment is in effect, a par­ent, as part of the offi­cial birth reg­is­tra­tion process, need not com­plete a Form SS-5 and may request that SSA assign a social secu­rity num­ber to the new­born child.⁴⁵

      Did the fed­eral gov­ern­ment have the right to impose such leg­is­la­tion on the States? In 1923, it was argued by Mr. Alexan­der Lin­coln, Assis­tant Attor­ney Gen­eral of Mass­a­chu­setts, “The act is uncon­sti­tu­tional. It pur­ports to vest in agen­cies of the Fed­eral Gov­ern­ment pow­ers which are almost wholly unde­fined, in mat­ters relat­ing to mater­nity and infancy, and to autho­rize appro­pri­a­tions of fed­eral funds for the pur­poses of the act.” The com­plaint went on to state that, “The act is invalid because it assumes pow­ers not granted to Con­gress and usurps the local police power.” “The act is not made valid by the cir­cum­stance that fed­eral pow­ers are to be exer­cised only with respect to those States which accept the act, for Con­gress can­not assume, and state leg­is­la­tures can­not yield, the pow­ers reserved to the States by the Con­sti­tu­tion. The act is invalid because it imposes on each State an ille­gal option either to yield a part of its pow­ers reserved by the Tenth Amend­ment or to give up its share of appro­pri­a­tions under the act.“⁴⁶

      In the final analy­sis the Act was an offer from one cor­po­rate entity to another for the pur­pose of pro­vid­ing an avenue for the indi­vid­ual cit­i­zen of Amer­ica to reg­is­ter as a sub­ject of the State and there­fore a cit­i­zen of the Fed­eral cor­po­rate State, the true and actual sov­er­eign agent, called the United States. The fed­eral gov­ern­ment would assume the posi­tion of Father of the sub­ject cit­i­zen accord­ing to the law of Parens Patriae.⁴⁷

http://presys.com/~ekklesia/cvc.htm