State legislators haven’t given up on an effort to deprive parents who hold traditional views about sex differences of custody of their confused children.
State legislators haven’t given up on an effort to deprive parents who hold traditional views about sex differences of custody of their confused children.
Y ou know what they say if at first you don’t succeed. Last Tuesday, at a marathon, nine-and-a-half-hour hearing before the legislature’s Health Coverage, Insurance, and Financial Services Committee, Maine progressives tried again to curb parental rights.
Earlier this year, I covered my beloved home state’s legislation to remove parents’ custody of their children for the crime of rejecting the latest fads in gender ideology. Grassroots backlash led by Representative Katrina Smith managed to stall that effort in the legislature’s Judiciary Committee. Last Tuesday, progressives tried to sneak a new, more expansive bill through a different committee.
Under Maine law, legislators may introduce shell bills called “concept drafts” with vague titles that are later filled by substitute amendments. A concept draft from January 2023 called “An Act Regarding Health Care” was filled with a substitute amendment hours before the scheduled hearing on March 5. The text was not publicly available by the time members of the public were expected to testify at the state capitol (it can now be read here), while printouts available at the hearing were missing half their pages, according to legislators present.
“I’ve never seen the concept draft used in this way and to this extent,” Representative Joshua Morris, the committee’s ranking member, told me. “The people of Maine should be disappointed in their government.
Representative Laurel Libby, who helped mobilize opponents to testify on Tuesday, is more blunt. “I don’t think they ever intended for [the original version] to pass,” she said. “They wanted to see where the holes might be, then introduce the real bill through the concept draft.”
The original bill would have allowed Maine courts to take custody of any child who seeks so-called gender-affirming care over the objections of their parents. It would further have prohibited courts and law enforcement from returning runaway or abducted children found in Maine to their legal guardians if the kids claim to have run away in search of “gender-affirming care.”
In addition to criminalizing dissent on one of the most contentious issues in American public life, this legislation would have undermined the law in other states and, more important, created a liability shield for any kidnapper, groomer, child-trafficker, or abuser who cajoles a child to leave home and head Down East with him.
Unexpected grassroots backlash to the first draft prompted Judiciary Committee Democrats, who hold a supermajority in both chambers of the legislature, to punt on the issue. Progressives, however, were neither content to let the matter drop nor satisfied with the scope of the original bill.
The new version removes age restrictions and adds abortion tourism to sex-change tourism, so any minor can obtain an abortion in Maine regardless of age or parental knowledge. Proponents claim that this is a response to conservative states passing bills regulating and restricting abortion. But opponents have pointed out that it would enable any child rapist to bring his victim to Maine to dispose of the evidence. It would also grant any medical practitioner the right to counter-sue other states in Maine courts if they restrict child abortions or sex changes. Fifteen attorneys general from other states have warned that this would create a constitutional crisis that must be resolved by the Supreme Court.
The day of the hearing, the committee gaveled in at 1:30 p.m. Approximately 25 proponents, mostly representing organizations that stand to benefit financially from more so-called gender-affirming care, testified from two to four o’clock in the afternoon. Nearly 225 opponents followed until the committee adjourned at eleven at night.
In a telling exchange, ranking member Joshua Morris asked a Planned Parenthood representative testifying in favor what steps the organization takes to verify that an adult who accompanies a minor to their clinic is the custodial guardian. In response, she said Planned Parenthood follows all state laws, then launched into a sales pitch of their many fine offerings.
Opponents were able to mobilize thanks in large part to Representative Libby’s network of 3,000 pro-life activists in Maine, which she organized last session to oppose a law providing taxpayer funding for abortion. All 225 opponents were individuals or Republican legislators, including Representative Smith. She focused her testimony on the exponential rise in gender-dysphoria diagnoses, which indicate that gender confusion has become a social contagion among children and health practitioners. Her testimony was echoed by a 26-year-old detransitioner, who shared his story of having hormones pushed on him by a therapist at age 21 when he sought treatment for depression.
“I was struggling with mental health and I wished they’d have helped me with that,” he said on the record, adding, “These procedures should be illegal.”
It was a heroic effort that turned out overwhelming opposition to the bill on such short notice. Representative Smith believes that they may have a chance to defeat the proposal because it has become so broad and touches so many different provisions of Maine law. The next step is a work session where the bill can be debated and amended by committee members, concluding with a vote on whether to recommend passage. No work session is currently scheduled for the bill, but it could happen as soon as Wednesday given its champions’ unscrupulous tactics.
Is there still a chance to stop the bill despite the Democratic supermajority? Representative Morris believes this can only happen if Democrats, particularly in vulnerable, rural districts, continue to receive unexpected backlash. “The key is going to be to keep hearing from their constituents,” he said.
Representative Libby cited gender ideology as an issue that could put some Democrats at risk. “There are members of the legislature who would be in a vulnerable position if they vote for the bill,” she said.
If you live in Maine, Representatives Smith, Morris, and Libby deserve your thanks for fighting to protect children’s health and freedom of expression. Wherever you live, they also need your prayers. Mainers who want to preserve freedom of conscience need to lend them your support, however you can give it. Too many children’s lives depend on it.