Senator Launches Bill To Shield Parents, Kids From Trans Ideology– thefederalist.com

Sen. Eric Schmitt, a Missouri Republican, has introduced a bill to protect parents from state-sponsored kidnapping by social workers when the parents refuse to agree to a child’s identification as transgender. The Yaeli Martinez Child Protection Act of 2026 is named after a 19-year-old California woman who committed suicide after being socially transitioned by her public school as a minor and taken from her family home by child protection caseworkers.

“Raising a child according to his or her sex is not abuse,” the bill declares. “Removal from fit parents is contrary to the best interests of children, creates trauma for the child, damages familial bonds, and exposes the child to well-documented risks in state custody. Children have suffered great harm and even have died after being removed from loving families by the state for sex-rejecting interventions.”

The bill would block federal funding administered under the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act for states, tribes, and organizations that participate in the removal of children from the homes of parents who don’t affirm the supposed transgender identity of children.

The bill would add to federal law the declaration that a parent “has the right to affirm a child’s sex,” including the refusal of “the provision, facilitation, funding, authorization, or permission of any sex-rejecting intervention for the child.” It would also codify the right of parents to refuse “the use of pronouns or titles that do not correspond to the child’s sex.”