California Lawmakers Think Parents Aren’t Paying Attention as They Eradicate Parental Rights

California Lawmakers Think Parents Aren’t Paying Attention as They Eradicate Parental Rights
Parents and students gather to protest parental rights policies in Placentia, Calif., on Jan. 18, 2022. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times
Erin Friday
Updated:
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Commentary
California Assemblywoman Wendy Carrillo of Los Angeles and state Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco have co-authored a proposal, Assembly Bill 665, that will allow children ages 12 and older to be stolen from their families. They want you to believe that their bill simply expands access to mental health services to marginalized children who are recipients of Medi-Cal.

That is blatantly untrue.

Carrillo proclaims that the measure is about equity and combating discrimination, employing every buzzword I would have fallen for in my past life as a bleeding-heart liberal. I am awake now, and I have read the bill and the code it is amending. I have been tracking Wiener’s handiwork over the past two years as he systematically decimates parental rights while simultaneously turning San Francisco into a cesspool of sex trafficking and drug use. And I know too well what is happening at California public schools. The jig is up, Carrillo and Wiener.

AB 665 isn’t merely aligning two existing codes—Family Code section 6924 and Health and Safety code section 124260—so that kids on Medi-Cal can get health care without their parents’ knowledge. These codes have a significant difference between them: Family Code addresses outpatient services and residential shelters, while Health and Safety Code addresses only outpatient services. This fact is ignored not only by the authors but by the legislative counsel—the group of attorneys who analyze the bill—and who, in theory, are supposed to be impartial.

Pursuant to the Family Code, a child 12 and older can consent to mental health counseling or residential shelter services without parental consent if the mental health provider believes that he is mature enough to participate intelligently and one of these exigent circumstances exists: (1) the parent is accused of abuse or incest, or (2) the child is in “serious danger of serious physical or mental health harm to self or to others.”

AB 665 removes those emergency circumstances, allowing a child 12 and older to consent to placement in a residential shelter without any claim of abuse against the parents or a serious risk of harm to himself or others. The result is that a child, along with his school or community mental health provider—those providers that support the idea of “chosen families” as opposed the child’s actual family—can decide that the child doesn’t come home from school that day without any evidence of abuse or wrongdoing.

I went round and round with Carrillo’s staff trying to explain that the Health and Safety Code only relates to outpatient services while the Family Code covers both outpatient and residential services. I broke down the codes word by word, explaining the meaning of the word “or.” My words fell on deaf ears.

Carrillo’s staffers repeatedly told me that the intent of the bill was not to have children consent to residential shelters, but to have them consent to services while in the shelters, despite all evidence that the bill would accomplish this goal. Then they told me that the parts of the bill related to children in the shelters apply only to runaway kids or homeless kids, while being unable to point to any such limiting language.

I reminded them that in law, judges examine the words of the code, and unless they are ambiguous, the intent is ignored. I offered to speak with the staff’s lawyers who would understand statutory construction. Worn down, I rewrote the bill to effectuate the stated goal, without removing the guardrails limiting consent to residential shelters. Carrillo’s office wouldn’t budge.

Then, the light bulb came on. If the authors’ intent is for young Medi-Cal recipients to have access to mental health services, all they needed to do was amend the code that prohibits such services for kids with Medi-Cal. The Welfare and Institutions Code 14029.8 states that “Section 124260 of the Health and Safety Code [mental health services for 12 and older] shall not apply to the recipients of benefits under the Medi-Cal program.”

The simple and straightforward solution would be to amend the Welfare and Institutions Code by excising the word “not.” This small change would then support Carrillo and Wiener’s claimed intent, providing mental health access to the kids on Medi-Cal without expanding the authority of mental health providers and children to consent to residential shelters. The bill would no longer be a state-sanctioned kidnapping bill.

I have sent a number of emails to Carrillo’s office asking her to amend the bill to remove the word “not” from Code 14029.8. Unsurprisingly, they have stopped communicating with me. So, Carrillo and Wiener’s real intent with AB 665 appears to be making it easy for the 10,000 new mental health providers that will be disseminated onto California public school campuses to convince your 12-year-old child that a “chosen” family is better than your real family, especially if the real family won’t agree to transgender interventions.

Once a child is deemed a “runaway,” or is in the foster care system, he can dictate his own gender interventions. California’s and Wiener’s legislative efforts already ensured that. This bill is a mechanism to find parents implicitly “abusive” for not transitioning their kids, without coming right out and saying it, because Wiener is too smart for that. He will continue to author these bills evidencing his deep-seated loathing of parents and his desire to aid in the transition of as many kids as he can.

It is notable that Wiener, who isn’t a parent, is also the co-author of AB 957, which will codify into law that it is in the best interest of a child to be supported in their trans-identity, favoring the affirming parent in a custody dispute. Make no mistake, “support” means only one thing: harm the bodies of perfectly healthy kids with puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and irreversible surgeries.

California appears to be on a crusade to sterilize as many gender-confused children as possible, before the rest of the parents wake up.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Erin Friday
Erin Friday
Author
Erin Friday, Esq., is a licensed California attorney and co-lead of the U.S. branch of Our Duty, a parent group dedicated to protecting children from gender ideology. Friday is a lifelong Democrat who voted for same-sex marriage.
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