It’s not too late to contact Governor Lamont and ask him to veto HB 5468 – the anti-homeschool bill.
From FERPA to manboobs, queer task forces to social media algorithms, everything you did (and didn’t) want to know about this legislative session . . .
Big Victories Against Big Abortion and Gender . .
Success! Anti-Catholic Hospital and Pregnancy Resource Center Bill Failed
HB 5516, a bill attacking pro-life institutions, failed again this year after a grueling public hearing in which abortion and “gender affirming” doctors (Dr. Savannah Kaszubinski) testified against institutions (including Pregnancy Resource Centers) that restrict counseling that encourages abortion or “gender affirming care”. Family Institute of Connecticut Action along with the Connecticut Catholic Public Affairs Conference and the Connecticut Pregnancy Care Coalition and dozens of FIC members squared up against the massive Connecticut General Assembly Reproductive Rights Caucus (look to see if your legislator is a member), CGAG, Planned Parenthood of Southern New England, American College of Physicians, SHE Leads Justice, Reproductive Equity Now (formerly NARAL) and the CT ACLU among others.
You can watch Leslie Wolfgang’s testimony at the 5:00 mark here. https://www.youtube.com/live/sLgnYCazjdU?si=iGP6vHmtYbD9czZL&t=18000
How did your legislator vote? A “nay” vote protected our Catholic and pro-life institutions.
Success! Parental Notification Public Hearing
HB 5309, the first public hearing on parental notification of abortion, a goal of our organization and Connecticut pro-lifers for 35 years! Over 135 testimonies submitted in favor and 70 against, including the Connecticut Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics (CT-AAP)! Pediatricians against parental notification of abortion. Ask your pediatrician if they are a member and whether they support their professional association’s position against parental notification. An organization affiliated with our publicly funded, UConn Law School also testified against parental notification.
New this year is dueling testimony from Yale, including one beautiful testimony in favor of the bill. We also appreciate testimony from the National Association of Prolife Nurses; Professor Adam Kissel, visiting lecturer at Trinity College and Bruce Deckert, Publisher and Editor of Today Magazine. You can read FIC Action’s testimony and watch our montage video in support of this bill. A special “shout out” to Representative Brian Lanoue, who was instrumental organizing the hearing and Representative Irene Haines who submitted individual testimony in favor of the hearing. We are grateful to the other legislators who bravely co-sponsored this bill. Do you see your legislator on this list? If not, ask them why at your next local meet & greet.
Success! Defeated the Expansion of Connecticut’s “Shield Laws” and Press Conference
FIC Action and our legislative allies were instrumental in defeating an expansion of Connecticut’s “shield laws” which protect doctors at the expense of suffering minors – SB 227 and SB 295. Family Institute of Connecticut has led the charge over the past several sessions against bills that encourage doctors in CT to break certain laws in other states. Unbelievably, Connecticut promotes lawlessness while discarding those hurt individuals seeking justice – many of whom are minors. This year proponents of the shield laws tried to exponentially expand the reach of this lawlessness to include the use of telehealth and then also hide the names of violating doctors. Despite a litany of publicly funded and well-heeled activist organizations (see below) in favor of SB 227 and 295, including the Connecticut State Medical Society (is your doctor a member?) and Office of the Attorney General and Connecticut State Comptroller, and a final-day-of-session push by Governor Lamont, these bills were defeated.
FIC Action held a press conference with our allies and had proposed amendments prepared and ready should these bills have reached the floor. You can read FIC Action’s testimonies here and here. Below of some of the organizations who worked very hard to limit the rights of hurt plaintiffs from other states . . .
For the first time, Connecticut parents whose families have been directly hurt by “gender affirming” doctors and activists publicly testified against these bills and spoke at a joint press conference co-sponsored by FIC Action, the Connecticut Catholic Public Affairs Conference and LGB Courage Coalition. You can read their suffering, speaking for dozens of other families, in their publicly available written testimonies. FIC Action members and State Representatives also read their testimony aloud at our press conference.
We want legislators to remember . . .
Anonymous Connecticut Parent 59 ” Instead of slowing down and addressing the underlying emotional struggles she was experiencing, the adults and institutions around her increasingly affirmed a new identity and encouraged her to move further away from her family.”
Connecticut Family 1 “While we struggled to remain sympathetic and kind to our daughter, we also came to understand that she was surrounded by peers who urged her to disown us, which she in fact did about three years after “claiming” her “male identity.” After this time, she received testosterone (based on a short visit with Planned Parenthood) and breast surgery.” . .
“Many of our parents have children that were “socially transitioned” in secret in their schools. Some of our parents have experienced intervention from the Connecticut Department of Children and Families when they have refused to support medical procedures for their minor children. Some of our parents (those involved in divorce or custody proceedings) have had courts rule against them, again for declining to facilitate social or medical transition for their minor children. Many of our parents have experienced enormous pressure from the “helping professionals” who interact with their children, namely teachers, counselors, pediatricians, mental health workers, and even law enforcement personnel.”
“I can confidently speak for all of the parents in our support group when I state that expanding access to “gender procedures” and becoming a “sanctuary state” for people who wish to provide them is going in exactly the wrong direction for Connecticut. We have all witnessed, first-hand, just how ruinous wrong-sex gender identification is for our children, and our profound hope is that this pernicious ideology will soon become a relic of the past. As parents, the last thing that we want is for more children and families to be affected as we have been.”
Connecticut Family 2 “Any suggestion that these decisions should be slowed down, considered, or accompanied by meaningful mental health counseling were resisted adamantly and often resulted in her cutting off contact with us altogether for months at a time. Her endocrinologist – with whom I met – explained that he routinely prescribed cross sex hormones at the first brief introduction to his patients. “They tell me their story, and I prescribe hormones at the first visit.” This was my daughter’s experience. And the rush to medical intervention continued. Within a year she had stolen money, lied (a first in my experience with her), and raised a sum on the internet to complete her double mastectomy, removing the healthy organs that are women’s breasts in order to appear more manly to the world.”
Connecticut Family 3 “Since 2025, I’ve connected with many parents in Connecticut and across the country with similar experiences, especially with older teens and young adults. Most remain quiet publicly because they fear damaging their relationship with their child. Others feel isolated as other family, friends, teachers, and sometimes even church clergy affirm their child in what they see as effectively a method of self-harm. Supporting a non-affirming approach does not mean a parent doesn’t love their child. It means they have concerns about irreversible medical harm.”
and the Smith Family, “In 2019, the Connecticut Department of Children and Families removed my 14-year-old daughter from our home. Our home had been certified as safe and non-abusive. The reason for her removal was not neglect, violence, or instability. The reason was that I would not affirm the claim that my biological daughter was actually male.”
Below is a montage video of our presser.
Breaking: Committee Vote on Protecting Doctors over Sterilized and Mutilated Minors
During the Committee Vote on SB 295, a tally on failed Amendment A and Amendment B reveal which legislators chose to protect abortion and gender doctors (and Planned Parenthood) over hurt minors in other states. See how your legislators voted below. Remember these “nay” votes on Election Day this OCTOBER, early voting starts on October 19 and runs to November 1.
Success! Vacation Bible Schools protected in Connecticut, SB 137 – Do you have wonderful memories of Vacation Bible School as a child? Have you been planning a VBS for this summer with your church that relies on volunteers, a box of old art supplies and a lot of love from families, children and a pastor? We know that many churches devote limited resources to these camps, but the State of Connecticut was getting ready to add layers of bureaucracy and unnecessary expense and time to running these fun and usually free activities for children growing up in their faith. Thanks to the outpouring of people contacting their legislators using our Action Center, the VBS regulating provision of this bill was killed.
Success! Protecting Connecticut’s abortion regulations HB 5554 – Crucial to protecting Connecticut’s regulations restricting abortion is a bi-partisan Legislative Regulation Review Committee. You will recall efforts over the past few years to eliminate regulations that limit abortion. Unable to defeat the regulations at the Department of Public Health in 2024 or last year, in the Public Health Committee, this year there was an effort to gut the bi-partisan makeup of the Legislative Regulation Review Committee. The LRRC can stand as a bulwark against removal of these regulatory protections for the unborn. This bill was a priority for FIC Action and due in part to opposition from both parties, the makeup of the LRRC was protected. FIC Action testified against this bill and along with our allies, asked pro-lifers to submit testimony – and over 696 people did! You can read the testimony here.
Success! Helping families protect against subversive social media algorithms. Passed: HB 5037, AN ACT PROMOTING THE SAFETY OF MINORS ON SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS, restricting a child’s access to addictive social media passed. FIC Testified in favor of HB 5037 which was wrapped into SB 5, an omnibus bill that addressed, in part, protections for minors and social media. Early this session, FIC alerted our allies within the child protection community including FOCUS and the Age Verification Providers Association and asked them to testify and submit written testimony supporting this bill. The testimony of UConn Professor John Murphy was especially convincing. This bill was supported by the Attorney General and the Governor’s Office. HB 5037 was strongly opposed by the a so called “Chamber of Progress” who criticized the Governor for aligning himself with a family organization and insisted that “LGBT youth” needed protection from their parents and access to affirming communities while alleging that “parents are not always best suited to control how a young person uses a platform”. We are glad legislators sided with parents in their battle to reign in the use of addictive social media.
Success! Medicaid Surrogacy for Single Men failed: HB 5483 “AN ACT CONCERNING FERTILITY CARE UNDER THE MEDICAID PROGRAM” would have used Medicaid to subsidize fertility treatments for fertile people, including single males to access surrogacy and newborns. This bill failed, but a similar bill requiring individual insurance policies to cover such procedures for single men passed. Universal surrogacy and access to other people’s newborns is an ultimate goal of Big Gender. You can read FIC’s testimony here.
Success! Stockpiles of Cross Sex Hormones for Connecticut Minors failed: HB 5482 would have mandated increased premiums for families so minors could stockpile sterilizing cross-sex hormones. Truly dangerous on so many levels. Opposed by DSS, “Many of these medications require ongoing clinical monitoring, including laboratory testing, dosage adjustments, and assessment for side effects or symptom changes. Dispensing a 12‑month supply at once is not medically appropriate or evidence‑based for many of these therapies and could compromise safe patient management.” Additionally, “gender affirming care” has come under increased scrutiny for permanently lowering bone density, causing infertility, cardiovascular risks, and stymied mental health development.
Success! Task Force on “Queer” Fertility failed. In the last days of session, Amendment A to the bill, which passed the House, added a requirement that the state organize a “task force” to study the fertility problems of “transgender, queer, intersex, asexual or allied persons” who don’t. have. procreative. sex. FIC members sent 100s of e-mails to their own legislators and the bill ultimately failed. Read FIC’s testimony against and learn more at our blog post. See how your legislators voted. A “yea” vote was a vote for more access to sterilizing and debilitating cross-sex hormones for minors. FIC Action has a lot more work to do to educate legislators about the dangers of GAC. How did your legislator vote?
Testimony to protect against fertility fraud, SB 293: Peter Wolfgang submitted written testimony in favor of a bill that addressed growing fertility fraud in Connecticut. While passing in the House, this bill failed to be voted on in the Senate.
Success! Supporting from the sidelines – saving babies and mothers from newborn abandonment with SB 156. Because of the nature of the topics we work on, FIC Action sometimes defers publicly supporting or opposing legislation. We were thrilled this year to have supported, behind the scenes, the passage of a bill to study providing mothers in difficult situations with more options to safely surrender a baby they cannot care for. We are appreciative to the legislators on both sides of the aisle and the grassroots leaders who advocated and supported this groundbreaking and much needed legislation.
Loss: Buying Babies for Single Men – HB 5374 was voted out of the House on 4/23, and the Senate on 5/4, this bill passed and will become law. “AN ACT CONCERNING HEALTH COVERAGE MANDATES FOR CERTAIN HEALTH CONDITIONS” raises Individual insurance premiums to subsidize surrogacy treatments, including expenses for eggs and implantation, for single, fertile men. This bill was heavily sponsored by a dozen gender clinics and queer activist groups. Gender clinics and Planned Parenthood prescribe artificial female hormones to men so they can grow breasts and some try to nurse babies. There is a paraphilia called erotic lactation or lactophilia (sexual arousal connected to breastfeeding or milk production). Engaging in lactophilia with a baby is criminal and child abuse, but FIC members opposed this bill because they will be subsidizing, through their premiums, single men receiving babies without another partner involved and the low, but very serious risk, that some of these babies will be sexually exploited. The individual insurance market also includes many working families and self-employed residents who already struggle with premiums. They would be required to subsidize expensive infertility treatments for people who are fertile. Up to $100 per year for a family of four. Disappointingly, many legislators from both parties voted in favor of this bill. See how your legislators voted below:
Loss: HB 450 – Religious Freedom Restoration Act weakened (Sec. 14 of HB 5044)! In an effort to game the system so the Attorney General could win a case against a group of people who don’t want to follow the State’s schedule of vaccines, Connecticut’s RFRA has been weakened. A terrible loss on religious liberty in Connecticut with the first degradation of Connecticut’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Connecticut’s RFRA has been one of the most important civil liberties protections in our state law. It ensures that when the government burdens a person’s exercise of religion—even through a law that applies generally—the state must meet the highest legal standard. The government must usually show that the burden serves a compelling governmental interest and that it is using the least restrictive means to achieve that interest. Read FIC’s testimony and blog post. See how your House and Senate legislators voted.
Mostly a loss – Anti-Homeschool Bill. We await news from the Governor on HB 5468, the anti-homeschool bill, and will provide an update soon.
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