California Governor Gavin Newsom seems to be pulling out every trick he can find to increase his popularity. After telling Floridians that California has more freedom, now the Democrat leader has signed a bill allowing children from other states to get transgender surgeries and procedures without the need for parental consent.
Leftists are appalled that some states ban transgender surgeries and drugs for minors, so Senator Scott Weiner (D-CA) from San Francisco sponsored SB 107 to make California a sanctuary state for minors who want to have the life-altering procedures. Under this new regulation, law enforcement is not allowed to cooperate with subpoenas or other legal actions from out-of-staters regarding children who go to the Golden State for transgender care. This includes runaways, minors without legal guardian consent, and, some suggest, even those who’ve been abducted by a non-custodial parent or “well-meaning” aunt or uncle.
Many see this as a blatant usurping of parental rights, however, and backlash was inevitable. Emilie Kao is a senior counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, just one of 50 groups that sent the CA governor a letter of protest. “With this law, California is basically saying it can take temporary emergency jurisdiction over any child from anywhere if there’s a disagreement between a parent and the state of California over how to treat a child’s gender distress,” she told Fox News Digital.
While supporters claim SB 107 protects transgender children by giving them a safe space to go for their procedures, those standing in opposition say it both revokes the right of parents to decide what is best for their children and denies them access to kids’ medical records. According to the letter sent to Newsom:
“SB 107 makes California akin to the Pied Piper, enticing minor children nationwide to leave their families and run away in pursuit of harmful drugs and sterilizing surgeries, all of which cause irreversible harm to the minds, bodies, and family relationships of America’s precious children. According to the American College of Pediatricians, 80 to 95 percent of children who experience gender confusion will ultimately embrace their biological sex if they are not encouraged to pursue gender identity treatments. Children experiencing gender confusion need the love, support, and guidance of their parents.”
Kao said the new law creates a “very bad incentive” that makes an exception to “the normal protections of children” since anyone can take a child to the state for life-altering treatments without custodial consent. “So it gives an incentive to bad actors, bad parents and ill-meaning relatives to take a child away from the custodial parents to California,” Kao explained.
Wiener defended his bill, saying it “protects families with transgender children by ensuring parents aren’t tossed in prison for allowing their trans kids to access health care.” He added that, “Texas, Alabama and other states are literally threatening to incarcerate parents – and physicians – for allowing this health care.” However, as Kao pointed out, “These are surgeries that cannot be reversed, and that will leave children with permanent damage, including possibly sterilization.”
Transgender Trends
Chloe Cole (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Are there really so many kids who feel they were born into the wrong body, or is it more of a popularity trend? A report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that between 2009 and 2019, kids in the UK seeking transitioning treatment increased by 1,000% among biological males, and a whopping 4,400% among biological females. Here in the US, the number of young people who identify as being transgender has nearly doubled since 2017.
Transitioning from male to female used to be the most common, but now that has been reversed and more females are identifying as males. Dr. Lisa Littman, a former professor of Behavior and Social Sciences at Brown University, calls this “rapid onset gender dysphoria” and believes it may be caused by pressure or peer influence from social media.
Chloe Cole, 17, in an interview with the New York Post, said that is what happened with her after she joined Instagram at the age of 11:
“I started being exposed to a lot of LGBT content and activism. I saw how trans people online got an overwhelming amount of support, and the amount of praise they were getting really spoke to me because, at the time, I didn’t really have a lot of friends of my own.”
Chloe was just 12 years old when she decided she was transgender. She told her parents the following year and was prescribed testosterone and given puberty blockers. At 15, she had a double mastectomy. At 16, however, she realized it had been a horrible mistake.
These tragic stories are becoming more common as children mature and realize they do identify with their biological gender. Known as “detransitioners,” these young people seek ways to reverse a gender transition and have to live the rest of their lives with medical procedures that irreversibly changed them forever.
And now Gavin Newsom has given sanctuary to children who want dangerous procedures that will alter their lives forever – and parents have no say. As these surgeries become more popular and accessible, there will likely be many more regretful detransitioners. “I was failed by the system,” Chloe said. How many more of our youth will come to feel the same way?
