Legislators in the Washington State House are furiously passing new ways for their government to further separate children from their concerned and involved parents.

One of these bills is Senate Bill 5599, deceptively described as “an act relating to supporting youth,” which would erect a very harmful wall between youth mistakenly seeking controversial medical services and their guiding, protective parents.

Under current Washington law, youth or homeless shelter personnel must notify parents within eight to seventy-two hours of youth coming to their facilities without parental permission. But some legislators are working hard to add one notable stipulation: parents will not be notified of their child’s whereabouts if the presenting child “is seeking or receiving protected health care services.” These “protected” health care services are very specific and speak directly to the ideology behind such legislation. They are detailed in companion bill SB 5489 and include only so-called “access to reproductive health care services and gender-affirming treatment.”

According to the proposed law, “gender-affirming treatment” means “health services or products that support and affirm an individual’s gender identity, including social, psychological, behavioral, and medical or surgical interventions.” Reproductive health services include all terminations of pregnancy, “including self-managed termination,” contraception and “assisted reproduction.”

The U.S. Supreme Court has reinstated, at least temporarily, the FDA’s sale and use of mifepristone.

The court on Friday afternoon temporarily stayed (stopped) a U.S. district court order that blocked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) approval of the abortion pill.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito — who last year authored the opinion overturning Roe v. Wade — issued the brief order on Friday.

He wrote:

“UPON CONSIDERATION of the application of counsel for the applicant, IT IS ORDERED that the April 7, 2023 order of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas … is hereby administratively stayed until 11:59 p.m. (EDT) on Wednesday, April 19, 2023. It is further ordered that any response to the application be filed on or before Tuesday, April 18, 2023, by 12 p.m. (EDT).”

The order from Justice Alito allows the FDA to continue to permit the sale of mifepristone, the first of two drugs used in a chemical abortion, and also removes the several restrictions that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit had placed on its use earlier in the week. The order applies until Wednesday, April 19 at 11:59 PM ET.

The Fifth Circuit had stayed the portion of U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s order blocking the FDA’s approval of the abortion pill, but had imposed several significant restrictions on its use, including blocking women from ordering the pill through the mail.

It was the Psalmist who wrote long ago, “They who dwell in the ends of the earth stand in awe of Your signs; You make the dawn and the sunset shout for joy” (65:8). In reading through a Washington Post piece, I couldn’t help but think of my friend and our former colleague, Bruce Hausknecht. Careful readers of the Daily Citizen will have noticed his absence from the site. He retired on February 28th of this year.

Bruce devoted the last 18 years of his professional career to Focus on the Family and the Daily Citizen. He authored well over 1400 articles. An attorney, he was originally hired to serve as the ministry’s legal analyst. Pouring over countless court decisions related to marriage, religious freedom and a whole host of issues, Bruce had an uncanny ability to glean the essence and significance of a case from hundreds of pages. As they say in farm country, he knew how to shuck the corn right down to the cob.

Writing for the Daily Citizen, Bruce broadened his scope of family-related subjects, but remained our go-to-guy when it came to all things related to the judiciary. Other than Bruce riding off into the sunset to spend time with his beloved wife, Bonnie, and children and grandchildren, what does this have to do with the rising and setting of our closest celestial star? Over the years, we occasionally featured some of Bruce’s incredible photographs on the Daily Citizen Facebook page. An early riser and excellent photographer, our legal beagle was known to stop off on his way into the office to capture some remarkable sunrises here in Colorado Springs.