This month, Washington state lawmakers passed a bill that permits youth shelters to hide runaway youth seeking “protected health care services.” These services include so-called “gender transition” and abortion. Shelters are not required to notify families who are not supportive of these services. Instead, shelters can now report the youth to a state department, which can then make service referrals.

Lawmakers claim the bill is necessary to “protect” minors who experience gender dysphoria, assuming children are better protected by the state than their parents. Nothing could be further from the truth. Parents should not become suspects of the state for refusing their children something as harmful and irreversible as “transition” procedures.

There are times when the state must step in to protect kids from abusive parents. But drastic measures should be the exception, not the presumption; especially when it’s over a brand-new, harmful ideology from which the rest of the world is backing off.