They Did It Under the Cover of Darkness. We’re Shining a Light on It.
Two years ago, Connecticut passed a “Safe Harbor” law which protected abortionists in Connecticut from the nonexistent threat of being sued by pro-life states. It was laughable at the time. But what happened next was quite serious.
In the dead of night, toward the end of the 2022 session, an “implementer” was inserted into the budget that extended the Safe Harbor law to “gender-affirming care.”
So if a minor from a state that outlaws genital mutilation should come to Connecticut to have the gruesome procedure done, and then changes her mind and wants to “de-transition,” she and her family would not be able to receive help from the CT State Judicial system that all other out-of-state litigants receive and sue the Connecticut doctor who mutilated her.
In fact, the state created a legal cause of action for the doctor against the minor child for the doctor’s expenses related to defending against the minor’s claim. Who do our legislators love more? The suffering child attempting to sue a doctor, or the doctor?
Again, our state government did this horrible thing under the cover of darkness. Extending the abortion Safe Harbor Law to include “gender-affirming care” never got a public hearing. The state simply did it without any public input.
Which is why FIC and our allies this week did this:
As the Rep-Am delicately described it, a public hearing on “Proposed technical changes to the state’s interstate shield statutes turned into a wider debate Monday on children and gender identity….Opponents of providing gender-affirming care to children urged that legislation be revised to permit claims from people who received gender-affirming care as minors.”
FIC and our allies told a befuddled Judiciary Committee that the Doctor Protection Bill should be amended to exclude minors. That is, that minor patients ought to be able to sue doctors who have performed genial mutilation on them. “The Family Institute of Connecticut proposed the definition to be changed to all medical care relating to the treatment of gender dysphoria in patients over age 18,” reported the Rep-Am.
Some members of the Judiciary Committee were unhappy that a hearing on a “technical” bill became a venue for the public to have a say about the genital mutilation of minors in Connecticut.
But these conflicts are caused when subject-matter hearings are bypassed in the middle of the night. They passed this law behind the scenes in 2022. There was no hearing. They simply stuck it in the budget. The legislature seemed not to want the public to testify on the issue then…or now.
The attack on our youth by transgender ideologues has many aspects. FIC has been fighting back on several fronts.
For months now we have been telling you about our coalition’s Let Parents Parent and Let Kids Be Kids project. Three weeks ago we held a press conference asking the Education Committee to hold a public hearing on our bills.
You can read the Hartford Courant’s coverage of our press conference here. If the Courant story is paywalled, you can still read about our press conference in CT Mirror and CT New Junkie.
The Education Committee refused to raise our bills for a hearing. State Treasurer Erick Russell then attacked the five legislators who presented our bills in a Courant op-ed.
If you can’t read Russell’s op-ed, you are not missing much. Here was our take:
But to fully appreciate how bonkers Erick Russell’s op-ed is, you have to read Chris Powell’s column responding to it.
When the transgender law that started all this madness–the Bathroom Bill–was passed in 2011, FIC stood alone against it.
Here’s the good news. We are not alone anymore.
When FIC testified against the Doctor Protection Bill this week, we were part of a coalition that included the Connecticut Catholic Conference, Moms for Liberty, a university professor of ethics, medical doctors, even gay and transsexual activists.
In fact, we did such a thorough job that our dumbstruck opponents had to call in reinforcements. Only after the hearing did written testimony appear, opposing our position, from gender clinics, the ACLU, Yale, and so forth. These are the forces we are up against.
But those institutions are not what they once were. Here is a story about the Yale professor, for instance, who submitted testimony. She is part of WPATH, whose recent discrediting has set Twitter (“X”) on fire.
Again, the attack on our youth by transgender ideologues has many aspects. FIC and our allies will keep fighting to Let Kids Be Kids and to Save Girls Sports. We will continue our effort to restore the right of minors to sue doctors who have performed genital mutilation on them. And we will be fighting on a number of other fronts in this war that we have barely even touched upon yet.
In all of this we are grateful, most of all to Almighty God, for the privilege of serving him in this way. And we are grateful to you, our members, who give us the means to keep fighting.
You Might Also Like
