Happy Non-Gestating Parent’s Day

What a Father’s Day — err, make that Non-Gestating Parent’s Day — gift from Albany Democrats. New York’s legislature has passed a bill enshrining “gender neutral language” across the state’s legal codes. “Mother” would be stricken from the law books, replaced by “gestating parent.” Deleted, too, would be “father,” replaced with “non-gestating parent.” The term “paternity” would be dropped in favor of “parentage.” Will Governor Kathy Hochul sign this bill?So far, Mrs. Hochul is being cagey about her intentions. The governor, a spokeswoman tells us, “believes mothers are mothers and fathers are fathers, and no legislation changes that.” In an election year, though, it’s hard to imagine why Mrs. Hochul would endorse a measure whose denial of traditional norms echoes the Newspeak of Orwell’s “1984.” Her GOP rival, Bruce Blakeman, is more forthright in his opposition.The bill, in Mrs. Hochul’s view, “appears to address technical legal issues related to surrogacy and parentage.” She plans to “review” the bill and reckons that “anyone making bad-faith arguments is deliberately misleading New Yorkers for political gain.” Mr. Blakeman doesn’t go in for such a shilly-shallying. He asserts that, if he accedes to the governorship, “I’ll stand up for moms and dads against this insanity.”Backers of the legislation claim it is “needed to be consistent with current statute and case law,” as a Democratic state senator, Luis Sepulveda, puts it. An adoption lawyer, Leslie Silver-Hoffman, tells the New York Post that “you have adoptive parents who are of the same gender in New York.” Yet it’s a fact of life that every human child has one mother and one father. What’s the logic — or virtue — of trying to conceal that?Plus, too, it’s not necessary to delete the words “father” and “mother” from the laws. The bill passed by the legislature would amend measures as various as the Family Court Act, the Domestic Relations Law, the Judiciary Law, the Vehicle and Traffic Law, and even the Alcoholic Beverage Control Law. Surely lawmakers can clarify who has custody of, say, children of same-sex couples without sweeping away age-old designations like father and mother.The attempt by New York Democrats to, in effect, erase fathers and mothers from the law books is of a piece with a larger trend on the far left. It’s a campaign “driven by allies and activists for transgender people,” the Times has reported. “Medical, government and progressive organizations” face pressure to adopt “gender-neutral language,” the Times adds, to blur lines “between women and transgender men,” and “those who reject those identities.”Feature, say, how pro-abortion activists like Reproductive Freedom for All, which once spoke of the importance of a “woman’s choice,” now confine themselves to gender-neutral communications. Today the words “woman” or “women” are absent from the agenda page, “How We Win,” of the group’s web site. The Times reported that the words “pregnant people” and “birthing people” are increasingly being used in lieu of “pregnant women.”Under President Biden, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention featured a guide on “Care for Breastfeeding People.” When Andrew Cuomo was governor of New York, his health department offered policy recommendations during the Covid pandemic for “birthing people.” Washington State’s health department speaks of the notion of “chestfeeding” in the context of “pregnant and recently pregnant people.”It calls to mind Orwell’s denunciation, in the political language of his day, of “euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.” New York State’s Catholic Conference has a clear-eyed appraisal of the Albany Democrats’ bill. “The truth is that mothers are mothers, and fathers are fathers,” the state’s bishops aver. “Words matter, and serious changes to our governing language serve only to wash away the importance of these roles in our society.”

Happy Non-Gestating Parent’s Day

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