Albany’s war against parents’ right to control, or even know,  what medical procedures are done to our children continues with Assembly Bill A6761 (Karines Reyes, D-Bronx). Up to now, most of these bills only allowed for vaccines to be given to minors without parental consent, but A6761 cuts to a core goal of the medical services and products industry: it completely eliminates parents’ right to make medical decisions for their children. Children of any age could be given drugs, including psychiatric drugs, vaccines, dental procedures, hospitalization, and surgery without parental knowledge or consent, and allows Medicaid funds to pay for anything that is done to the child. This is simply the worst children’s health bill ever.

A6761 proposes a new paragraph for Public Health law Section 2504, 

“8.  Any person, including a minor, who comprehends the need for, the nature of and the reasonably foreseeable risks and benefits involved in any contemplated medical, dental, health and/or hospital services and any alternatives thereto, may give effective consent to such services for themselves, and the consent of no other person shall be necessary. The commissioner is authorized to promulgate rules and regulations necessary to effectuate the provisions of this subdivision.” 

TAKE ACTION

Please use the panel to the right to send a message to your Assemblymember expressing your opposition to A6761.

And please call your Assemblymember and politely let the staffer know you want your Assemblymember to oppose this radically dangerous bill. His or her name and telephone number should appear below. 

The following legislators, including, unfortunately, Assembly Health Committee Chair Amy Paulin, have co-sponsored A6761. Please call them and politely ask that they reconsider their support. 

Karines Reyes, Sponsor, (718) 931-2620, (518) 455-5102

Any Paulin, Chair of the Assembly Health Committee, (914) 723-1115, (518) 455-4292

Linda Rosenthal, (212) 873-6368, (518) 455-5802

Andrew Hevesi, (718) 263-5595, (518) 455-4296

The Official Description of A6761 is misleading

The official description of the bill claims that it , “Allows homeless youth to give effective consent to certain medical, dental, health, and hospital services, provides for insurance coverage of such health care services consented to be such youth.“

But Albany passed a law last year (A9604/S8937), in less than 10 weeks from introduction to passage by both houses, that went into effect in March 2023, that allows homeless and runaway minors to make medical decisions without parental knowledge or consent. This bill did not even make it to our attention since we do not monitor homeless and runaway issues, but obviously, we should have. 

The real-world effect of A9604/S8937 is that parents lost all rights to make medical decisions for their children, or even know what is being done to our children, if  the child either runs away from home or the family becomes homeless. 

Proponents argued that runaway and homeless children could not get needed medical care, but New York law already allowed for physicians to treat runaway youth if the child’s health is in danger and a parent cannot be reached, New York Public Health Law, Paragraph 4.  

So if runaway youth are already allowed to get needed healthcare, what was the point for A9604/S8937? A celebratory press release issued by the Legal Aid Society following passage of the bill in the New York Senate spilled the beans, 

“Gender-affirming healthcare is a life-saving treatment. (A.9604/S.8937) will ensure the right of young TGNC New Yorkers to access gender-affirming healthcare”. 

A6761 extends the loss of parental rights already in place for runaways to all children

A6761 is about allowing trans surgery and medical procedures for all children, not just runaways and homeless minors, without parental consent, and getting the taxpayer to foot the bill. 

This purpose is clear in a memo from the New York Civil Liberties Union in support of A6761,  “In many cases, and in particular for sensitive care, young people will not seek health care if they are required to involve a parent or their confidentiality is compromised.”

The bill goes far beyond trans procedures. If A6761 passes any time a child is at a school health clinic, a health fair, or any other place where they interact with the medical services and procedures industry things could be done to children that parents will never know about. 

• Legislators need to consider these issues:
• How can the legislators agree that completely removing parental involvement in a child’s healthcare can possibly be a good thing?
• There is NO minimum age.  
• This bill is based on the presumption that parents are not to be trusted with their children’s healthcare and that the child knows better. 
• The decision of whether a child “comprehends the need for, the nature of and the reasonably foreseeable risks and benefits” of a medical procedure is left solely to the discretion of people who could have direct financial or professional interest in performing the procedure. 
• What happens if there are side effects or other adverse reactions and the parent has no idea what has been done to their children? Parents will still be legally responsible for the care of the child but they and medical professionals will not have the information necessary to provide potentially life-saving care.
• Do children know enough about their own personal and familial medical history to make life-altering medical decisions? 
• Nothing in the bill prevents children from “consenting” to participating in medical experiments.
• New York, like all states, already has a process for minors who no longer want to be under their parents’ direction. Any minor can apply for emancipation from their parents. This bill in effect partially emancipates all children without due process.
• There are no protections for developmentally disabled minors, especially those who are not visibly disabled.

The minimum age for everything is being raised, but lowered for medical procedures and drugs

For more than a decade, New York legislators have been steadily raising the minimum age for minors to do everything from using tanning salons to buying tobacco to getting married.  Yet in the world view expressed in A6761, a 12-year-old is not mature enough to go to a tanning salon but he or she is old enough to decide to remove healthy organs. 

These are just some of the ways New York law has raised minimum ages for minors:

2012, Age for using a tanning salon raised to 16.

2012, Minimum age for piercings and tattoos without parental consent set at 18

2016,  Age for tanning raised to 18

2017, Age of marriage raised from 14 to 17 with parental and judicial consent

2019, Minimum age a person can be prosecuted as an adult raised to 18

2019, Minimum age to buy tobacco and e-cigarettes raised from 18 to 21

2020, Legal age of marriage raised to 18

2021, Age to buy a semi-automatic rifle raised from 18 to 21

2022, Age to buy nitrous oxide cylinders raised to 21

2023, Juvenile delinquency prosecution of any child under 12 banned

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