As States Ban Parents From Resisting Their Kids Going Transgender, Will Congress Step Up?
Attacks on parents are getting closer to home. From a woke education establishment to increasingly activist child protection agencies, parents are losing the right to decide how to raise their children. My new legislation, the Parental Right to Protect Act, will ensure parents aren’t expelled from their child’s life because they disagree with the left’s radical ideas on sex.
More medical facilities are offering life-altering, non-reversible medical interventions for adolescents who believe they were born the wrong sex. Many parents are against these experimental surgeries and hormonal interventions because they know these treatments will cause irreparable physical and emotional harm to their children.
Take Chloe Cole, for example, who at age 13 began taking puberty blockers. At age 15, she had a double mastectomy. And at age 16, she made the decision to stop these interventions and instead affirm her sex. Earlier this year, Chloe launched an organization alongside others who regret having received so-called “gender-affirming care.” This organization now works to warn others about the harms caused by such medical interventions.
It’s no wonder countries such as the United Kingdom and Sweden have recently suspended their use of this experimental approach on children, recognizing its inherent risks. Too bad the Biden administration isn’t following suit.
In fact, the Biden administration and congressional Democrats are hell-bent on pushing a radical agenda in schools and in the home that is often squarely opposed to parents. Just this week, NBC news reported that the “Education Department has opened what appears to be the first-of-its-kind investigation into Granbury Independent School District after it pulled library books dealing with sexuality and gender.”
Parents Shut Out
Schools across the country are pushing children’s books and curricula in the classroom to normalize transgender ideology. When parents ask for access to school curricula many are stonewalled. One Rhode Island mom was billed $74,000 after filing a Freedom of Information Act request to gain access to her daughter’s school curriculum.
School boards nationwide have used various tactics for silencing parents, such as barring or restricting parents from participating in public meetings. One school board in Pennsylvania is now being sued for a pattern of trampling the First Amendment rights of parents, which includes cutting parents off in the middle of a sentence, yelling over them during their allocated time to speak, and deleting the remarks of parents it disagrees with from the official record and video recording.
Parents who do not support transgender medical interventions are sometimes kept in the dark by the education bureaucracy. An Ohio school district told teachers they did not have to inform parents if a student began transitioning at school, and one Florida school district kept “gender transition” counseling of a 12-year-old girl secret from her parents until she attempted suicide — twice.
CPS Going After Parents
If dealing with these issues at school wasn’t bad enough, now child protective services (CPS) are going after parents. In Indiana, a court recently upheld the removal of a child from parental custody after a CPS investigation alleged the parents were “verbally and emotionally abusing” the child when they would not use the child’s preferred pronouns or otherwise affirm the child’s desire to begin transgender medical interventions.
In California, Abigail Martinez lost custody of her daughter and a court permitted only one hour of visitation each week because Martinez did not want her daughter to begin transgender medical interventions. Tragically, her daughter took her own life after changing her name and taking cross-sex hormones. These parents are being separated from their minor children for simply protecting them from procedures known to be harmful.
CA Law Jeopardizes Parental Rights Nationwide
Things will likely get worse for parents. In September, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed SB 107 into law, jeopardizing the rights of parents in and out of California. SB 107 allows minors anywhere in the United States to run away from their parents to get transgender surgery in California — and their parents can be barred from intervening.
There is no doubt SB 107 will be used as a weapon against parents. This law robs parents of their rights and gives the state of California unprecedented power over a child’s health.
The utter disrespect for parental rights is becoming a tragic cultural norm in America. And it is harming children.
Legislation to Protect Parental Rights
That’s why I introduced the Parental Right to Protect Act. This bill defends parental rights by ensuring CPS does not penalize parents for protecting their children from transgender surgery and hormones.
Parents should be able to make medical decisions for their children without fear of the government taking their children away. Allowing California to become the nation’s arbiter of parental rights would be a fatal mistake. We must stand up to the radical left and allow parents to protect their children — whether that be at school or at home.
Rep. Virginia Foxx serves North Carolina’s 5th congressional district.
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