Washington State Democrats cleared a bill this week that many argue would slash parental rights by allowing minors to undergo gender-affirming care without parental consent. The measure, headed for Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee's desk, is raising eyebrows among those who say the decision to undergo irreversible procedures should be delayed until people are old enough to consent.
Senate Bill 5599, or "An act relating to supporting youth" more specifically allows shelters to house runaway minors without notifying parents and gives no legal recourse for parents to reunite with their children.
"It is essentially government-sanctioned kidnapping of your kids," said "Undivided" podcast host Brandi Kruse, who appeared on "Fox & Friends First" early Wednesday.
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"It doesn't make you a bad parent, it doesn't make you an abusive parent to want to know where your child is at night and to want to have a say in what kind of medical care that your child is getting, and this bill would strip parents of that right," she told Fox News' Todd Piro and Ashley Strohmier.
While voicing concern over the bill, Kruse said every parent, regardless of their feelings about transgender issues, should be alarmed about what's at stake.
"When this bill came up at the beginning of this legislative session, I said on my show that I thought it was the most dangerous bill that I'd seen in about 12 years covering politics in this state," she said.
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"I said at the time, ‘I think it should be national news. I think every single news network should be talking about it,’ and, look, there's two issues at play here – one of them is parental rights. Every single parent, regardless of politics or ideology, regardless of how they feel about transgender issues, every single parent, this should freak them out..."
Former Washington Senate candidate Tiffany Smiley, R., said on "America's Newsroom" that it's "deeply troubling" for parental involvement to be limited.
She told host Dana Perino that state involvement in healthcare and wellbeing of youth would need to be bolstered by significant justification, particularly as parents increasingly feel as if they are being eliminated from their children's lives and education.
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"Parents are upset," Smiley continued. "They want hope for the future and my new project, Rescuing the American Dream, found that nearly 50% of parents want politics out of the classroom, and they want to get back to reading, writing and arithmetic."
Smiley's project found that Americans' top two priorities are family and health and, when asked why the country is on the wrong track, 34% blamed the government, an issue tying back into the issue of government replacing parents.
