A California bill aims to control parents’ medical decisions about their children by compelling them to provide “gender-affirming care,” a psychotherapist told Fox News.
Parents fighting custody battles could be liable for child abuse if they don’t “affirm” their kids’ gender under the recently amended AB 957. The legislation, if it becomes law, would require judges presiding over such disputes to favor the parent who best “affirms” the minor’s preferred identity, though it doesn’t outline what “affirmation” includes.
“For the state of California to bring in a bill based on this new approach is so high-handed and reckless, it’s going to cause an awful lot of distress,” said Stella O’Malley, an Ireland-based psychotherapist who heads Genspect. The group advocates for evidence-based approaches to gender distress, according to its website.
“There’s a range of issues with this bill. For starters, they don’t define what is affirmation,” O’Malley told Fox News.
AFFIRMATION CARE IS ‘CHILD-LED,’ ASSUMES MINORS CAN BEST DECIDE MEDICAL PROCEDURES: PSYCHOTHERAPIST
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The legislation passed California’s lower chamber May 3 and originally proposed that the courts decide whether each parent in a custody battle was affirming of the child’s gender. An amendment added last week added criteria for what constitutes parental responsibility for child welfare, requiring that parents must affirm their child’s gender identity if they are to be judged fit for providing for “the health, safety and welfare of the child” in a court of law.
“A key aspect of the affirmative approach is that it’s child-led,” O’Malley said. “The affirmative approach believes the child knows better, which is basically denying the immaturity of a child.”
“Never before in the history of mankind have we had children leading adults, have we had children leading professionals in the decisions around their care,” O’Malley continued.
An author of the bill, Assemblywoman…
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