Midway through Pride Month, as LGBTQ+ rights are on everyone’s minds, New York parents are on track to lose their rights thanks to three swift actions.
On Monday, Mayor Eric Adams designated New York a sanctuary city for so-called “gender-affirming care.”
Not only is the city in the business of warehousing migrants in school gymnasiums, it’s now a haven where minors can be rushed through elective, irreversible medical procedures even before their brains reach maturity.
Twenty states have chosen to safeguard childhood and banned such care on minors.
The mayor pushed full steam ahead: His office says “the executive order denies the use of resources by the City of New York to cooperate with any prosecution or investigation by another state of an individual for providing or receiving gender-affirming care.”
In other words, if your out-of-state child is trafficked here for the treatment, you’re out of luck.
Adams’ order comes on the heels of Friday’s announcement by England’s National Health Service that puberty blockers will no longer be administered to minors except in clinical trials.
An inconvenient truth is the science on gender-affirming care for kids is anything but settled. Very little research exists on the prevalence of regret and detransition among minors, but reports estimate it to be upwards of 30%.
Lack of research didn’t stop state “gender-affirming care” legislation from quietly passing, now awaiting Gov. Kathy Hochul’s signature.
The bill allows a parent to transport a child to New York to receive sex-reassignment treatment without the other parent’s consent or any legal implications.
State agencies are prohibited from cooperating with the out-of-state parent and any investigation regarding the child.
This is akin to aiding and abetting parental kidnapping of a child across state lines.
It also hamstrings local authorities from protecting the rights of minors, too young for informed consent.
Every Democrat (and one Republican) in the Assembly and Senate voted for this bill.
These are the same electeds who kept schools closed, plunging kids into an online abyss, leading to severe social isolation and fueling what the surgeon general calls a youth mental-health emergency.
Instead of investing in youth empowerment — educational and experiential opportunities, increased access to team sports and high-quality mentorship — and evidence-based approaches to rectify learning loss, New York is leaning into a harmful ideology that empowers adults to prey on vulnerable children.
Also Monday, the New York State Education Department released a new framework and legal update for schools to provide a safe and supportive environment for “transgender and gender expansive students.”
These guidelines existed as early as 2015, but they’ve been expanded due to activist lobbying.
They explicitly allow schools to keep children’s transitions secret from parents.
The framework also ensures that school-based support professionals will provide and affirm students’ gender identity.
Will school counselors, teachers, psychologists with religious convictions be forced to affirm and encourage children’s transitions too?
Will schools now only hire professionals who believe in the transgender ideology and blackball those with differing beliefs?
Is this a violation of religious liberty?
Dutch scientists who pioneered the use of puberty blockers used a very small and selective sample of adolescents with no comorbid mental-health conditions.
More recent data point to a sharp increase of minors — particularly girls — with mental-health comorbidities like autism, depression and self-harm receiving services for gender-related distress.
Clinicians often pressure parents to “affirm” them, but studies from Scandinavia and the United Kingdom show there is no evidence to suggest these “affirming” interventions are effective or even medically necessary.
Mental health often deteriorates considerably post-transition.
The actions New York officials took this week are antithetical to the longstanding truth that children’s best interests are served by empowering parents, not eroding their rights.
The US Supreme Court affirmed the expansive rights of parents in 1972: “The history and culture of Western civilization reflect a strong tradition of parental concern for the nurture and upbringing of their children. This primary role of the parents in the upbringing of their children is now established beyond debate as an enduring American tradition.”
The government cannot strip those rights.
Mayor Adams, Gov. Hochul, state senators and assemblymembers, state Education Commissioner Betty Rosa: Leave our kids alone.
Natalya Murakhver and Dana Hensley are co-founders of the nonprofit Restore Childhood, which advocates for children and the protection of parental rights.
Twitter: @RstoreChildhood, @DanaMarie262