Congress Could Soon Declare That Affirming A Child’s Sex Is Not Abuse

Senator Eric Schmitt on Tuesday introduced a bill that would prohibit federally funded child welfare agencies from labeling parents as abusive for affirming their gender-confused child’s sex, rather than their transgender identity.

The Missouri Republican is the driving force behind the Yaeli Martinez Child Protection Act, which declares that “raising a child according to his or her sex is not abuse” and that “a parent’s decision to affirm a child’s sex and protect him or her from the harms of sex-rejecting interventions is an exercise of fundamental parental rights.”

“Raising a child according to his or her sex is not abuse, neglect, or maltreatment,” the bill reads.

“The Left’s radical gender ideology is harming children with irreversible treatments and procedures,” Schmitt told The Daily Wire. “But in blue states, parents are being punished, and sometimes even separated from their children, for protecting their kids from this permanent damage.”

“It is sickening that a state would impose ideological child-welfare policies to tear apart a family,” Schmitt added. “Parents know what’s best for their own families, and we need to defend their rights to protect their children.”

The bill is named after Yaeli Martinez, a young woman from California who took her own life at 19 after being secretly transitioned to a boy at her public high school. She was removed from her home as a minor when the California child welfare system labeled her mother, Abigail Martinez, abusive for refusing to affirm her as a boy.

“My daughter was murdered by a gender ideology,” Martinez told the California Senate Judiciary Committee in 2023. “My daughter was taken from her loving home because the state of California claims I was abusive for not affirming her trans identity. I lost my daughter over a name and pronouns.”

The bill specifies that child welfare agencies cannot remove a child from their home or deny a family foster or adoptive placement because parents refuse to socially or medically “transition” a child to another sex.

“No child should be removed from his or her family by the State, or denied foster or adoptive placement, for the purpose of subjecting the child to social, medical, or surgical sex-rejecting interventions by the State,” the bill states.

Transgender activists believe not affirming a child’s transgender identity is an act of abuse, and parents across the country have had their children taken away by state agencies for raising their gender-confused child according to their true sex. A Catholic family went viral in September 2026 when they publicly shared that the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families removed their daughter from their home because they would not affirm she was a male.

The bill is a drastic turnabout from the Biden administration’s policy requiring gender-confused kids to be placed in pro-LGBTQ+ homes.

Laura Hanford, senior policy analyst at the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Human Flourishing at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Wire this bill would “break the stranglehold” that transgender activists have on the child welfare system.

“For more than a decade activists who have both a financial and ideological stake in persuading children to reject their sex have quietly been training every corner of the child system that it’s abuse or neglect if parents don’t consent to experimental ‘transition’ treatments,” Hanford said. “The Yaeli Martinez Child Protection Act bill would break the stranglehold activists have over the child welfare system.”

The bill amends the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act and Social Security Act Parts IV-B and E. It prohibits child welfare agencies from using federal funds to administer any “program, project, curriculum, guidance, protocol, or training” that promotes or supports the “principle” that sex-rejecting interventions are in the best interest of the health and welfare of a child. It also prohibits agencies from promoting the idea that affirming a child’s sex is child abuse, emotional abuse, or “contrary to a child’s health, safety, or welfare, or an indication of parental unfitness.”

The bill gives parents a private right of action to seek legal remedy if they are harmed by an agency that does not comply with the bill’s requirements.

“Any parent, legal guardian, caregiver, or child who is aggrieved by an adverse State action alleged to have been taken by a covered entity, or any parent, legal guardian, or caregiver who is aggrieved by a violation of section 115(b) may bring a civil action seeking relief in any United States district court, regardless of whether the specific operation, division, facility, or program of the covered entity that was engaged in such adverse State action was itself funded, in whole or in part, by an award under this title,” states the bill.

“Families don’t really have recourse now when they are faced with a judge and child welfare system trained to view them as abusers if they don’t affirm their child’s claim to be the opposite sex,” Hanford told The Daily Wire. “The bill offers a remedy — they won’t be at the mercy of a system that takes their child then drags the proceedings out till the child ages out and is permanently estranged from family and harmed by sex-rejecting interventions.”

The Daily Wire uncovered a 78-page plan showing how the Biden administration was planning to make affirming transgenderism the national standard within child welfare services without having to pass a single law.

The crux of that plan was the creation of the Child Welfare Sexual Orientation Gender Identity and Expression Institute (SOGIE). Funded by a $20 million grant from the Department of Health and Human Services, SOGIE was on track to employ a 40-person team to push transgenderism on child welfare agencies across the country.

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