California’s ‘legal kidnapping’ bill imperils gender-confused kids

Next week California’s state senate could take one more step toward effectively ending parental rights in the Golden State.

If the body’s Appropriations Committee approves Assembly Bill 495, the “Family Preparedness Plan Act of 2025,” it sets up a floor vote on a law that will allow nothing short of legal kidnapping — and put gender-confused kids in unimaginable danger.

As detransitioners, we know firsthand how parents’ rights can shield children from a medical industry seeking to drug and butcher them.

When Luke was a teenager seeking out cross-sex hormones and permanently disfiguring surgeries to pursue a false transition, his mother Michelle Rodgers was the one who told him, “No.”

As a nurse and as a parent who refused to consent to so-called “gender-affirming care,” Michelle saved Luke from a lifetime of regret.

But had California’s AB 495 been in effect, Michelle’s right to make that decision on her son’s behalf would have meant nothing.

This bill would permit any adult to claim a mentoring relationship over any child, permit the child to live with that adult, and allow the adult “mentor” to claim an inability to contact the child’s actual parents.

It gets worse: A “mentor” can then become the child’s guardian simply by signing a one-page affidavit.

Those behind AB 495 have sold it as a way for detained and deported illegal immigrants to create “caregiving arrangements” for their children — but the measure’s scope is broad enough to put every child in California in massive danger.

Gender-confused children, who often seek psychological affirmation and medical intervention against their parents’ wishes, are particularly at risk.

If any adult can claim authority over a child and give consent for that child’s medical and psychological decisions, parents can be rendered irrelevant.

Time after time, we’ve heard from gender-confused kids that an outside adult — often one met online — was the one who initially groomed them to accept gender ideology. Often, the goal is to promote a sexual relationship.

AB 495 would let these adults go a step further and gain legal authority over their targets, a pedophile’s dream.

For parents, meanwhile, it’s a nightmare — and for parents of gender-confused children, things are bad enough as is.

Chloe’s parents in Central Valley, Calif., were bullied into letting her transition by doctors who insisted she’d commit suicide otherwise.

Chloe was on puberty blockers by age 13, and as a high-school sophomore she underwent a double mastectomy, surgery she now regrets.

But under AB 495, even parents like Michelle who resist the medical establishment may have no say in their children’s decision-making.

Had it been law when Luke was younger, he could have sought any other adult in his life to help him along the path to gender surgery.

After all, school counselors and doctors were “affirming” him as transgender from the age of 13 — and with scores of activists positioning themselves online as surrogate “glitter families,” he could easily have found someone willing and able to procure cross-sex hormones and surgeries for him.

“All I kept thinking is, ‘Somebody’s hurting my kid,’ ” Michelle said in the new documentary “Identity Crisis: A Mother’s Instinct vs. the Transgender Industry.”

If online groomers were able to legally kidnap Luke, they absolutely would have.

Parents of transgender-identifying children must not be overlooked in California’s debate over AB 495.

Gender ideology relies on a medical and legal establishment that is able to tear families apart with impunity.

We’re sharing our stories, and Michelle’s, in hopes of empowering other moms and dads to stand up to radical gender ideologues.

But if the law declares that any adult can declare authority over any child at any point, there is little a brave California parent will be able to do.

If we truly want to protect kids, we have to ensure that the state cannot remove parents from their children’s lives.

Meanwhile, as more and more formerly gender-confused children become clear-minded adults who condemn the harm done to us as minors, the lawmakers and bureaucrats who lied to parents and undermined their authority will start being held to account.

California lawmakers would do well to recognize this reality — if not to protect the state’s children, then for the sake of their own political futures.

Chloe Cole and Luke Healy are detransitioner advocates and leading subjects of the IW Features documentary series “Identity Crisis.”