Parents and legal experts condemned a bill that would label children as “abused” if their parents don’t allow them to obtain a sex change during interviews with the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The bill, H.B. 4876, would force parents to provide abortion services for their children, let them get a sex change and or other cross-sex procedures, and if they don’t comply, they would be labeled as child abusers. The legislation could allow for children to be taken from their families by the state if they do not provide them with the services, legal experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation. (RELATED: ‘Parental Nightmare’: Blue States Are Becoming Magnets For Runaway Kids Seeking Trans Treatments)
The language of the bill could result in children being taken away from parents who don’t “affirm” their “gender,” Sarah Perry, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, told the DCNF.
“We’ve already seen it happen. You’ve seen it happen in other states,” Perry told the DCNF.
PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA – JUNE 25: An LGTBQ+ flag waves during a game between the Philadelphia Phillies and the New York Mets at Citizens Bank Park on June 25, 2023 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Nwachukwu/Getty Images)
Perry pointed to a case which is pending before the Supreme Court, M.C. and J.C. v. Indiana Department of Child Services. The case involves a Catholic couple in Indiana who refused to call their child by pronouns that did not match the child’s biological sex, which resulted in the Indiana Department of Child Services removing the child from their home.
“It is not abusive to stand in the gap of this wicked agenda and to keep your child protected from it. The REAL abuse is to inflict harm on children by removing their healthy body parts or to disrupt their natural biological puberty with hormones,” Shannon Adcock, founder of Awake Illinois, a parental rights group, told the DCNF.
“Parents are understandably worried this bill will consider them ‘abusers’ simply for protecting their child from gender medicine. The opposition to the bill has been immense and it’s quickly receiving national attention,” Adcock continued.
One other parent and a parental rights activist expressed similar concerns about the bill proposed in Illinois. “When you redefine words you don’t necessarily have to change the laws,” Alvin Lui, founder of Courage Is A Habit, a parental rights activist group, told the DCNF. Lui said the bill would set a “dangerous precedent” and might allow a government agency to “remove custody” of children from their parents over gender ideology disagreements.
Jeannette Cooper, a parent in Illinois, expressed the same concern. Cooper lost visitation rights over not calling her daughter by different pronouns than her biological sex and worries this law will be weaponized against other parents to do the same. “People fear losing their child to the state. As soon as they take a child away from a parent, that’s trauma inflicted on the child. People fear child protective services coming to their door,” Cooper told the DCNF.
Adcock also shared worries that the bill might be used by the legal system to remove children from their parents. “Our organization holds grave concerns over the mandated reporter implications of this bill, which could result in parents being labeled ‘abusers,'” Adcock told the DCNF. She expressed concerns that judges might be able to “determine that the child is unsafe” if a parent is deemed “abusive” after not “gender-affirming” their child.
Two legal experts told the DCNF that the bills present legal issues and challenges to parental rights in Illinois. “If you perform a close reading of the bill, you’re going to find that this bill is a mess,” Perry told the DCNF.
The bill aims to make female genital mutilation illegal but makes it child abuse if a parent does not allow a child to receive a sex change. “One of the grounds for challenging this law in a court would be the fact that language like female genital mutilation conflicts with language like gender-affirming care. Much of which we know involves genital mutilation,” Perry continued.
The law could be used by the state of Illinois to remove children from parents who do not allow their children to receive a sex change, Harmeet Dhillon, founder of Dhillon Law Group, a national legal firm, and CEO & Founder of the Center for American Liberty, told the DCNF.
“Parents should not be branded as child abusers simply for safeguarding their children from irreversible procedures like mutilating surgeries or unalterable hormone treatments. This bill blatantly ignores the irreversible consequences of so-called ‘gender-affirming care’ and tramples on parental rights to guide their children’s medical choices. It’s an affront to scientific truth and parental authority, and any lawmaker backing it should be ashamed of themself,” Dhillon told the DCNF.
Democratic lawmakers around the U.S. have introduced bills aimed at allowing children to receive sex changes without parental consent.
One bill in New York would allow “homeless youth” to “consent to certain medical, dental, health, and hospital services,” which some legal and parental advocates told the DCNF is an attempt to hide gender transitions from parents. Another bill in California aimed to require judges to consider whether parents “affirmed” the “gender” of their child , but was vetoed by Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom in September 2023.
A law passed in Minnesota in April 2023 allows the state to have “temporary emergency jurisdiction” over a child present in the state if he or she “has been unable to obtain gender-affirming health care.”
Democratic Illinois state Rep. Anne Stava-Murray, the author of the bill, did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.
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