Washington state passed a bill allowing children to legally be taken away from their parents for not consenting to gender transition procedures on their child.
According to Senate Bill 5599, shelters could contact the Department of Children, Youth, and Families instead of parents for minors seeking reproductive health services or gender-affirming care.
The proposal would pave the way for more of a “compelling reason” to conceal a child who seeks sex change operations or reproductive health services such as abortion.
Democratic state Rep. Tana Senn praised the bill’s passing, saying she supports children who believe they belong in a different body than they were born.
“I am saying tonight to them that I see you, that I affirm you, that I hear you, that I love you,” Senn said.” With this bill passage, we say that Washington State does too.”
However, the Democrat-led state received much backlash for passing the radical bill, calling it an attack on families and parents by the Left.
State Senate Republican Leader John Braun said the troubling legislation “clears the way” for kids to “game the system” by taking away parent’s God-given rights.
“The only thing SB 5599 would do is cause harm by driving a wedge between vulnerable kids and their parents, at a time when a teen lacks the perception and judgment to make critical life-altering decisions,” Braun said. “A parent may not even know why the child ran away and could involve law enforcement or other groups in a desperate search… all the while going through an unnecessary emotional nightmare, imagining the worst about what might have happened.”
Braun also argued that children’s brains are not fully developed until they are at least 22 years of age, which means Democrats are pushing minors to believe they can make a life-alternating decision that they may regret one day.
“Right now, [Democrats] are sponsoring a juvenile offender sentencing bill based on ‘the expansive body of scientific research on brain development, which shows that adolescents’ perception, judgment, and decision-making skills differ significantly from that of adults,'” Braun continued.
