STATEMENT: PDE Action Supports Sen. Schmitt’s Bill Entitled The “Yaeli Martinez Child Protection Act”

Parents Defending Education Action is pleased to support Sen. Eric Schmitt’s “ Yaeli Martinez Child Protection Act.”

This bill honors Yaeli Martinez, a teenager who committed suicide in 2019 after her removal from her mother’s custody by the California child welfare system for her mother’s failure to treat her as a boy. Yaeli’s gender transition was nurtured by peers, school staff, and the state of California, who provided her with testosterone, housed her in institutions that affirmed her rejection of her sex, and isolated her from her family. Sadly, she never overcame the trauma of that separation or the physical harm inflicted by years of cross-sex hormone treatments. 

The Yaeli Martinez Child Protection Act is an urgently needed legislative intervention to ensure that politically and ideologically motivated bureaucrats and public employees can no longer remove children from their parents’ homes when those parents act in the best interest of their child. The Supreme Court has ruled that the child is “not the mere creature of the state” and that parents retain the constitutional authority to direct their children’s medical care. California’s usurpation of parental authority is nothing short of breathtaking, and its brazen use–and the use of states like it–of federal tax dollars to turn public service entities into ideological Gestapos that punish parents who question gender identity is positively Orwellian. Life-altering healthcare decisions for minors must be reserved to those who know their children best: that child’s parent or guardian.

We applaud Senator Schmitt and Representative Miller for introducing this critical bill, and we look forward to the day that the machinery of child welfare systems cannot be weaponized against loving, caring parents who recognize the principles of basic biology and simply want the best for their child. 

Sarah Parshall Perry 

Legal Director and Vice President

Parents Defending Education Action