WA Senate Majority Leader's Shocking Statements on Kids, Consent and Pregnancy Trend Worldwide Across Social Media
Majority Leader pegs age of consent at 13, adds that (kids) old enough to get pregnant (can) make "own decisions about what happens with their bodies and parents do not have the right to change that."
“Kids over 13 have the complete right to make their own decisions about their mental health care. Parents don’t have a right to have notice, they don’t have a right to have consent about that.”
“If they’re old enough to get pregnant, they’re old enough to make their own decisions about what happens with their bodies, and parents do not have the right to change that.”
- Washington State Senate Majority Leader Jamie Pedersen, (D - Seattle) in televised clips airing prior to a Senate-led effort to strip out parental notification provisions adopted by the 2024 Parents Bill of Rights initiative.
OLYMPIA — State Senate Majority Leader Jamie Pedersen later said he didn’t think anything he was saying was controversial, so he was surprised when the following quote was the first of his two jaw-dropping statements that went viral last week, sending the Majority Leader to the very top of X worldwide trends twice in 24 hours.
First, Pedersen discussed kids and consent on Fox News.
“Kids over 13 have the complete right to make their own decisions about their mental health care,” the Seattle Democrat told Fox News.
“Parents don’t have a right to have notice, they don’t have a right to have consent about that.”
The clip went blew up on X, drawing millions of views and trending number one nationally.
The controversy came as state Democrats prepared to make changes to a parental “bill of rights” initiative that the Washington Legislature approved last year.
The citizen-submitted initiative gave parents the right to receive notice of / and the option to opt their child out of student engagements related to sexual experiences or orientation, family beliefs, religion, morality, mental health, political affiliations, and other topics.
Pedersen told the Washington State Standard that “somebody deliberately edited my comments to mislead.”
“I won’t be accepting interview requests from Fox News anymore,” he said.
The Fox News correspondent who interviewed Pedersen rejected the idea that the senator’s comments had been misrepresented. “Senator Pedersen is being completely dishonest. His response to my question said parents are not entitled to notification if their 13-year-old child receives mental health treatment. His sound bite was not edited.”
In Case Thirteen-year-olds and Consent Didn’t Get Your Attention
The thirteen-year-olds giving consent quote wasn’t the only strange thing Pedersen said on the day his party moved forward on gutting the Parents Bill of Rights. In another televised interview, Pedersen talked about pregnant children, stoking further outrage.
“If they’re old enough to get pregnant, they’re old enough to make their own decisions about what happens with their bodies, and parents do not have the right to change that,” Pedersen said in another televised clip that would soon trend nationally.
Pedersen’s inflammatory comments occurred hours before the Senate passed the controversial Senate Bill 5181 that overrides provisions of the citizen initiative establishing what is commonly known as the Parental Bill of Rights. SB 5181 specifically exempts mental health care from the notification/opt out provisions. Critics note that mental health care now includes gender and identity-related issues.
If officials were trying to confirm
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