OAN’s Abril Elfi
5:02 PM – Wednesday, January 31, 2024
In a surprising turn of events, GOP Montana Governor Greg Gianforte has defended the state court’s decision to remove a 14-year-old from her parents after they had opposed a gender transition.
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According to reports, the adolescent is a biological female who wishes to transition into identifying as a male. The child had also started recently threatening suicide, the parents say.
Gianforte (R-Mont.) told The National Desk (TND) on Monday that when state authorities took a child away from parents who disapproved of their gender identity transition, they were “acting legally.”
Reduxx reported that this month, representatives from Montana Child and Family Services (CFS) seized custody of the 14-year-old from the parents, Krista and Todd Kolstad.
The report also states that in August, while being treated at a hospital, doctors began using the child’s preferred name and pronouns, which do not correlate with the child’s biological sex or government name.
The parents then expressed their opposition and said that allowing their child to undergo any form of gender transition, socially or medically, was a violation of their “values, morals, and … religious beliefs.”
The 14-year-old was later transferred by doctors to a specialized residential treatment facility in Wyoming.
According to Reduxx, Krista and Todd maintain that they were not informed about their child’s health care at that time and that doctors went behind their back and made these arrangements.
In September, the 14-year-old was then returned to Montana and placed in a federally-funded group home.
After four months, Krista and Todd purportedly received notice that CFS would get custody of the 14-year-old and that the child’s birth mother in Canada would take care of them after transitioning. Krista is the gender dysphoric 14-year-old’s stepmother.
“We were told that letting [the child] transition and live as a boy was in her ‘therapeutic best interest’ and because we aren’t willing to follow that recommendation, the court gave CFS custody of [the child] for six months,” Krista told Reduxx. “The judge said to us ‘you need to expect that reunification with your family may not be what you are expecting.’”
According to reports, the parents are now looking into their “limited” legal options in order to sue both CFS and the hospital that treated their child without their consent.
When asked his opinion on the matter, Gianforte stated that children’s rights to “grow up in happy, healthy homes with loving families” are “not always realized.”
“Upon hearing recent allegations related to a child welfare case, I asked Lieutenant Governor Kristen Juras – an experienced attorney, constitutional conservative, mother, and grandmother – to review it,” Gov. Gianforte said. “Consulting with the director of DPHHS and personally examining case documents, Lieutenant Governor Juras has concluded that DPHHS and the court have followed state policy and law in their handling of this tragic case.”
He continued, noting a Montana law that prohibits medical gender transitions for minors.
“Our administration will continue to advance policies that strengthen our families and protect Montana kids, like what we have done to promote adoption and to ban permanent, invasive, life-altering medical procedures on children, like puberty blockers, hormonal treatments, and sex-reassignment surgeries,” he said.
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