http://thefederalist.com/2018/09/24/california-passes-law-allowing-12-year-olds-get-tax-paid-transgender-treatments/
You have to be 16 obtain a driver’s license in California, 18 to buy a rifle, engage in consensual sex, or get married without parental consent, and 21 to buy a handgun, alcohol, or marijuana. But in the nation’s most progressive state, you only need to be 12 years old to privately seek and consent to treatment for gender transitioning.
The recently enacted California law was written to “provide that the rights of minors and nonminors in foster care, as described above, include the right to be involved in the development of case plan elements related to placement and gender affirming health care, with consideration of their gender identity.”
The new law also includes this provision: “All children in foster care, as well as former foster youth up to 26 years of age, are entitled to Medi-Cal coverage without cost share or income or resource limits. The Medi-Cal program provides transition-related health care services when those services are determined to be medically necessary.”
That means that all tax-paying Californians will help to pay for all the various services included in these transition cases, regardless of your opinion of the matter.
The law’s authors seem to mean well. The bill also states:
It is the policy of the state that all minors and nonminors in foster care shall have the following rights:
(1) To live in a safe, healthy, and comfortable home where he or she is treated with respect.
(2) To be free from physical, sexual, emotional, or other abuse, or corporal punishment.
Those provisions within this law—and many of the others that follow them—are laudable at first glance. Who would oppose kids living in safe homes and being free of abuse? But meaning well often differs from doing well. The difference can be found in the sub-provisions that enunciate the methods for the well-meaning provisions. One provision says, for example:
The right of minors and nonminors in foster care to health care and mental health care described in paragraph (4) of subdivision (a) of Section 16001.9 includes covered gender affirming health care and gender affirming mental health care. This right is subject to existing laws governing consent to health care for minors and nonminors and does not limit, add, or otherwise affect applicable laws governing consent to health care.