On Wednesday evening, I participated in a side event during this year’s United Nations Commission on the Status of Women cosponsored by the United States as a member nation and several civil society organizations, including The Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam). 

The event carried a provocative title: “What Is a Woman? Protecting Women and Children from Gender Ideology.” Yet the question itself points toward a simple reality. The people best positioned to protect a young woman or girl are generally her parents — the ones who welcomed her home, watched her grow, and desire her flourishing more deeply than anyone else.

I spoke as a lawyer and director of the Conscience Project, a religious freedom and conscience-rights advocacy organization. But I also came as a Catholic mother of 10 children, including several daughters who are now teenagers and one pre-teen. 

Raising daughters in today’s culture has reinforced a lesson that no policy document can capture: Girls flourish when they are known, loved and accompanied by the people closest to them. No school counselor, no government agency and no ideology can replace the presence of an attentive and loving parent.

Of course, there are real cases of child abuse. When a girl is genuinely unsafe at home, intervention is necessary and urgent. But abuse cannot become the default assumption guiding public policy. When institutions begin to treat parents as threats, the result can be profound isolation for children who most need stability and love.

The stories I brought to the United Nations illustrate the themes the commission itself had chosen for the week: access to justice for women and girls; the elimination of structural barriers; women’s full participation in public life; and the elimination of violence against women and girls.

Access to Justice: When Parents Are Shut Out

Michele Blair discovered when her daughter Sage was 14 that school officials had been quietly affirming Sage’s desire to be treated as a boy without ever informing her. Michele learned the truth only hours before Sage ran away. 

Sage was later found, after being exploited by sex traffickers who preyed on a frightened teenager with nowhere to turn. Yet when authorities intervened, they did not reunite Sage with Michele. A judge refused to do so, citing Michele’s unwillingness to declare that her daughter was her son. Sage was then placed in an all-boys’ group home, where she suffered further harm, and then she was trafficked again before being rescued by police. Through it all, Michele continued fighting to bring Sage home. Today, Sage is safe and pursuing her education on a full college scholarship.

California made this a statewide approach, illustrating how far the ideology can reach. The state required public schools to facilitate a child’s social gender transition while actively concealing it from parents. 

Two Catholic families bore the consequences firsthand. One mother and father learned only after their daughter attempted suicide and was hospitalized that she had been secretly presenting as a boy throughout seventh grade. They challenged the policy in court as representative of parents across the state. 

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Mirabelli v. Bonta to keep an injunction blocking the policy, recognizing the interference with religious liberty and parents’ due process rights.

Removing Structural Barriers: Parents Turning to the Courts

Other parents have won similar battles in court recently. In Maryland, Muslim, Orthodox Christian, Catholic and Jewish parents challenged their school board’s elimination of opt-outs from gender ideology instruction for children as young as four. In Mahmoud v. Taylor, the Supreme Court concluded that the policy placed an unconstitutional burden on religious freedom. 

Foster and adoptive parents have pushed back successfully as well. In Vermont, two Christian foster families had their licenses revoked for declining to affirm gender ideology, despite long records of welcoming the most vulnerable children. Vermont settled, agreeing that sincerely held religious beliefs may not be used against families in licensing. And in Oregon, Jessica Bates was denied a foster care license because she would not facilitate preferred pronouns or puberty blockers. She sued, and the Ninth Circuit ruled in her favor. 

These victories send a clear message: parental rights are not a relic of the past but a living principle in American law.

Women’s Participation: When the State Enters the Therapist’s Office

In Colorado, licensed therapists who work with minors experiencing gender confusion face serious penalties if they do not affirm a child’s declared gender identity. Encouraging a young person to consider their questions through the lens of faith can lead to fines and the loss of a professional license.

Kaley Chiles, a Christian therapist in Colorado Springs, is challenging this law before the Supreme Court. Her clients are families seeking honest conversation during a confusing time — not a state-mandated conclusion handed down before the first session ends. 

Research suggests up to 90% of children who experience gender dysphoria before puberty naturally reconcile with their biological sex if allowed to mature without intervention. A decision by the high court is imminent.

Violence Against Girls We Are Only Beginning to Recognize

We are also only beginning to reckon with a form of violence against girls happening not in spite of medical institutions, but through them. Female detransitioners describe irreversible interventions on developing bodies: double mastectomies during adolescence, puberty blockers affecting bone density and fertility, and cross-sex hormones administered while their identities were still forming. Many parents were told, often without evidence, that declining these interventions would put their daughters at risk of suicide.

Earlier this year, a jury in New York awarded $2 million to a young woman who underwent a double mastectomy at 16, concluding that her doctors had deviated from reasonable standards of care.

If the international community is serious about protecting girls from harm, the voices of detransitioners deserve careful attention.

What We Are For

We want children to flourish. We want young women to grow into adulthood with confidence, secure in the knowledge that their bodies are not problems to solve but gifts to receive. Families are not merely one voice among many in a child’s life — they are the first community where love, responsibility and truth are meant to take root. 

If our institutions truly wish to strengthen justice, remove barriers, and end violence against women and girls, they should begin by recognizing the irreplaceable role of parents who are present, attentive, and committed to their daughters’ well-being.