Washington Parents Gathering Signatures to “Stop the State from Hiding Our Kids”
SB 5599 was a highly contentious Washington bill that passed into law during the 2023 legislative session and takes effect on July 23, 2023. The “Brief Description” as written by legislative staff is: “Supporting youth and young adults seeking protected health care services.”
The final bill report includes what is meant by “protected health care services”:
Protected health care services means gender affirming treatment and reproductive health care services as defined in statute. Gendering affirming treatment means a service or product that a health care provider, [sic] prescribes to an individual to support and affirm the individual’s gender identity. Gender affirming treatment includes, but is not limited to, treatment for gender dysphoria. Gender affirming treatment can be prescribed to two-spirit, transgender, nonbinary, and other gender diverse individuals. “Reproductive health care services” means any medical services or treatments, including pharmaceutical and preventive care service or treatments, directly involved in the reproductive system and its processes, functions, and organs involved in reproduction, in all stages of life. Reproductive health care services does not include infertility treatment.
Here is a link to the session law.
Proponents of the law, such as the bill’s prime sponsor State Senator Marko Liias, say it is necessary to protect transgender youth. As quoted in a press release, he said:
Every child – including our trans youth – deserves to be safe at home. In a perfect world, that is the case, but unfortunately, that is not the reality. This legislation affirms our commitment to ensuring children have a safe and stable place to go when they are not welcome at home.
That was a curious statement since it didn’t address the new legislation. Washington State already had programs for licensed youth shelters and non-government Host Homes that provide places to go.
Opponents of the law say it violates parental rights. In a June 9 commentary published in The Chronicle, Brian Mittge wrote:
Now [with the passage of SB 5599], the state has a “compelling reason” to hide the whereabouts of children from their parents if the minor is seeking or receiving reproductive health care services (including abortions) or “gender affirming treatment” — an Orwellian term that essentially means hormones or surgery to change their appearance to resemble the opposite sex. As per RCW 74.09.675, referenced in this year’s bill, runaway minors must be hidden from their families if they want to undergo facial feminization surgeries, tracheal shaves, mastectomies, breast reductions, breast implants or any combination of so-called gender affirming procedures.
If a child runs away to get these medical treatments, the state will hide them under SB 5599.
“I keep trying to come up with a word to adequately describe how heinous this bill is,” said Dawn Seaver, a parent in Vancouver who is part of a group leading a referendum to overturn SB 5599.
The Reject 5599 website explains that signing Referendum 101 will bring the issue to a vote by the people at the ballot box on November 7, 2023. 200,000 signatures are needed by July 15 to meet the deadline.
Children’s Health Defense has a long history of spotlighting the lack of long-term safety studies–as well as the proliferation of industry-generated studies–on vaccines, drugs, pesticides, 5G, and more.
There are no long-term safety studies regarding the health outcomes of “gender affirmation” in any of its forms, from social messaging to drugs and surgery. No one knows the ramifications on individuals and society as a whole for telling children that they can choose their gender. Experimentation on human subjects is strictly regulated in the context of clinical trials, with special protections for children. Gender affirmation of minors experiencing mental health issues, such as gender dysphoria, is a social experiment that lacks those protections, rendering parental rights more important than ever.
The support of fully informed medical consent (which includes being told about the experimental nature of any procedure or intervention, as well as the risks and alternatives) and the parental right to medical decision-making are both encompassed in the mission of Children’s Health Defense.