New York bill would allow minors to consent to sex changes without parental awareness

New York Assembly Bill A06761, which was introduced by Democratic state Assemblywoman Karines Reyes in January, states that homeless youth would be allowed to "give effective consent to certain medical, dental, health, and hospital services."

However, parental advocates spoke to the Daily Caller and warned that this law would allow minors to authorize their own sex change treatments without parental approval because the bill's phrasing is purposely "vague."

The law would also bar physicians from alerting parents if their child received medical or mental health treatment unless the child requests otherwise.

Sarah Parshall Perry, a senior legal fellow with the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation, told the outlet that the legislation is an effort to circumvent laws where parents have to approve their child's sex change procedures.

"I find this very interesting language here," said Parshall Perry. "When we … paint children as incapable of making contracts, voting, getting a tattoo or registering for the draft, while saying they have sufficient maturity and intelligence to be able to make consequential decisions about long term healthcare; decisions that will affect their bodies, potentially for the rest of their lives. That is distinctly an effort to evade parental notification and parental involvement [in cases] where parents aren’t supportive of the junk science."

Michael Kane, a former special education teacher turned advocate, warned that teachers and guidance counselors could become tools of the state if the bill were to be signed into law. He explained that school staff in New York is already forced to "affirm" a child's gender dysphoria or risk disciplinary action.

"As a teacher when a crisis came up from one of my kids, I went to a guidance counselor," Kane told Daily Caller. "I’ve talked to guidance counselors who have directly said to me, ‘If a child tells me that they are a different sex and they want a different name, I automatically call them that and automatically call them by those pronouns.’ There’s no other questions asked besides that."

Kane cautioned further that, depending on the policies of each school, administrators would be in charge of a child's welfare instead of parents because instructors would be too scared to speak up for fear of retaliation or losing their jobs.

There have been reports of major negative effects from transgender sex change procedures, such as liver damage, blood clots, bone damage, and problems with fertility. Sex change surgeries have frequent consequences and necessitate numerous follow-up procedures.

Assemblywoman Karines Reyes said in a statement to Bronx News 12 that the bill was created to help "a very small fraction of young people who are currently falling through the cracks" have access to medical needs like getting a flu shot. However, critics say Reyes's remarks are misleading. The bill's text reads "any person, including a minor, who comprehends the need for, the nature of, and the reasonably foreseeable risks and benefits … may give effective consent to such services for themself."

Parshall Perry warned that if the "unconstitutional" bill passes parents would be left in the dark if their child were to suffer "emergency complications."

"It’s broad and constitutionally prohibited," Perry told the outlet. "We’re reading more and more now about the parade of complications, everything from hemorrhaging to tissue necrosis to loss of sexual function to incontinence. Then you’ve got parents, not only cut out of the loop when it comes to the primary decision-making on medical care, but then you don’t inform them after the fact whether the care has been acquired, putting them in a situation not to even be involved if there are emergency complications. The New York assembly and the state of New York is setting itself up for a massive lawsuit."

In 2023, Democrat New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a law making NY a sanctuary state for child sex changes.