Assemblymember Karines Reyes (D-Bronx) is the author of Assembly Bill A6761, a bill that allows any medical procedure or medical product to be given to a minor of any age without parental knowledge or consent. We call it, “The Worst Children’s Health Bill Ever.” 

Albany is lying about the bill in the official description of A6761 on the Assembly websites.  The Assembly description says the bill, “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 by such youth.“ 

What the bill really does is allow ANY  medical procedure to be done to ANY and ALL minors in New York without parental knowledge or consent. This fact was confirmed by Justin Westbrook-Lowery, Chief of Staff for A6761 sponsor Assemblymember Karines Reyes, and that’s exactly what the plan language of the bill says.

Reyes inaccurately said in an interview with Bronx News 12 that the bill covers, "a very small fraction of young people." That statement is factually incorrect. Reyes is either misrepresenting her bill, or she doesn’t understand what A6761 does, since the bill explicitly covers ALL children in New York. And we are hearing from legislators all over the state who believe the misleading official description of the bill.

We fought this bill hard in the last legislative session. We successfully got State Senator Rachel May to withdraw her companion bill S8352 last spring. Now we need to get rid of A6761 in the Assembly. 

TAKE ACTION

Please use the panel to the right to send a message to your Assemblymember correcting all the incorrect information Reyes is generating and asking him or her to oppose A6761.

Please call your Assemblymember and let her or him know you want them to oppose A6761

Or look up your Assemblymember here:

https://nyassembly.gov/mem/search/

TALKING POINTS

Asm. Reyes acknowledges the bill covers all children in the Memo she wrote for the bill saying it would allow “A minor who comprehends the need for, the nature of, and the reasonably foreseeable risks involved in a health services, as well as alternatives, may consent to the service on their own.”  No age limit, no limit to "homeless" minors, this includes all minors in the State.

Similarly, the New York Civil Liberties Union in a statement supporting A6761/S8352, wrote “A6761 (Reyes) would fill the gaps in New York law by allowing decisionally-capable young people to consent to their own health care. The NYCLU strongly supports A.6761 and urges its immediate passage.” 

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.
• A6761 would violate federal law. The infamous law passed in 1986, the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, which removed legal liability from vaccine manufacturers and people who administer vaccines, also requires that a healthcare professional provide a copy of the current vaccine information sheet to an adult patient or to a child’s parent/legal representative before vaccinating a child. 42 U.S.C. §300aa-26. Last year, a federal court voided a Washington DC law that allowed children 11 years and older to get vaccines without parental consent. See the judge’s decision here. Federal law requires inclusion of parents in vaccination decisions for minors.
• A6761  protects pedophiles by gutting mandated reporter laws. Paulin’s bill protects pedophiles by subverting New York’s  “Mandated Reporter” law that requires licensed professionals to report suspected sexual abuse of children to law enforcement. What rational person would not suspect something was very wrong if a nine-year old requested an injection that purports to prevent a sexually transmitted disease and the child did not want his or her parents to know about it? What should a mandated reporter do if an 11-year-old requests a drug to prevent HIV? Under New York law sex with children of that age is always a felony.
• 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?
• There are no protections for developmentally disabled minors, especially those who are not visibly disabled.
• Nothing in the bill prevents children from “consenting” to participating in medical experiments.
• New York has a long and sordid history of targeting children in institutions and foster care for medical experiments. This bill weakens protections of vulnerable children in those settings,
• Children would be allowed to “donate” organs without parental knowledge,
• Children would be allowed to be sterilized without parental knowledge,
• A bill is moving through the legislature to allow medically-assisted suicide. If both bills pass, children would be allowed to select medically assisted suicide without parental knowledge of consent.
• 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.
• For several decades New York has consistently raised the age for dozens of activities. The only area where there is an effort to lower ages is for medical industry access to children.

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 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

2024, Minimum age to drive an All-Terrrain Vehicle (ATV) raised from 10 to 14.

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