While the California legislature is considering ratifying a bill that would hold parents liable for child abuse for refusing to affirm their child’s chosen gender identity, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed five new laws in June protecting children from leftist indoctrination.

Four of the new Texas laws enable parents to oversee their children’s public school education, and another bans gender-change procedures for minors.

After his bill-signing ceremony on June 13, Abbott tweeted: “Our schools are for education, NOT indoctrination. Parents deserve access to curriculum, school libraries, and what their children are taught. Today, I signed four bills to deliver on that promise. A great start, but there is more work to be done.”

Among the bills Abbott signed, House Bill 900 prohibits the use of “harmful” books and library content that contain “sexually explicit, pervasively vulgar, or educationally unsuitable” material.

The Republican governor also signed House Bill 1605, which enables parents to access and review instructional materials. 

And in early June, Abbott made Texas the largest state to ban gender-change surgeries and related chemical treatments for children under age 18. Senate Bill 14 bans treatments “for the purpose of transitioning a child‘s biological sex as determined by the sex organs, chromosomes, and endogenous profiles of the child or affirming the child’s perception of the child’s sex if that perception is inconsistent with the child’s biological sex.”

According to the Family Policy Alliance (FPA), Texas is the 17th state to pass such a law, and the largest, with a population of 30 million people.

Meanwhile, California—with a population of more than 38 million—is considering a bill that rewrites Section 3011 of the state’s Family Code. If approved by the state’s Senate, Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom is expected to sign into law a bill that would effectively make it a parental violation of the child’s health, safety, and welfare to not affirm their chosen gender identity.

If passed, critics of the bill say a non-affirming parent of a transgender-identified child would be committing the equivalent of child abuse, opening the door for California courts to remove a child from his or her parents’ home.

Photo: Clark Van Der Beken / unsplash.com