Joan Quigley is a former assemblywoman from Jersey City and the president and CEO of North Hudson Community Action Corp. This was first published at nj.com.

What do “parental rights” actually give parents the right to do?

Choose where their children live, worship, go to school. Choose what to feed them, what they wear, what medical care they receive – oh wait, you can’t do that anymore in many places.

Kenneth J. Falk, the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana, made that point during legislative discussions about Indiana’s then-proposed law to ban gender-affirming treatment, saying it was “an attempt by the state to radically interfere with parental decisions and a clear violation of parental rights.”

But his arguments were shut down when the Republican-controlled legislature passed a ban on puberty blockers, hormone treatments, and surgeries for youth. Then-Republican Gov. Eric Holcombe signed it, a group of parents sued, and Judge James Patrick Hanlon issued a preliminary injunction to block it.

So it’s pending in Indiana, but similar laws have gone or are going into effect in 17 other states.

Federal judges blocked or partially blocked similar bans in Alabama and Arkansas. In Oklahoma the state Attorney General agreed not to enforce the law until a judge rules, and in Florida a judge has already ruled the law cannot be enforced.

The American Academy of Pediatrics supports gender-transition care when kids feel uncomfortable in their own bodies and parents agree they should get whatever transitioning care they need. The academy says denial of such care poses serious mental health risks, infringing on their rights and the rights of parents and doctors.

Here in New Jersey, the governor and the Legislature made it clear that families have the absolute right to determine what medical care their kids get.

However, there is one exception that I recall from years ago. In one local hospital a seriously ill child was brought in, but his parents refused to allow life-saving blood transfusions because of their religious beliefs. Physicians treating the youngster could tell the parents were torn – they desperately wanted their little boy to live but feared eternal damnation.

So a hospital attorney went to court where custody of the child was temporarily awarded to a state-appointed guardian who authorized care until the boy was healthy enough to return home to his relieved parents.

But that case involved religious rights, not only parental rights, and the parents did not object because it gave them the outcome they wanted without the risk of church-imposed discipline or eventual consignment to hell.

These other parental rights fights are quite different.

Where a small group of parents exerts their right to decide what books can be in a library, other parents are deprived of their right to allow their youngsters to be exposed to many cultures, lifestyles, and versions of history. When legislators listen to a few agitated constituents who believe in rigid gender identification and act on their demands, they deprive other parents and children of the right to self-determine who they are.

When angry anti-feminist legislators make laws imposing motherhood on reluctant women, aren’t they violating a basic right of all of us to decide for ourselves whether or not we want to be parents?

From huge decisions about becoming a parent in the first place to the most miniscule decisions about which high school bathroom an adolescent can use, the subject of parental rights varies not only from state to state but also from town to town.

It took almost 200 years and a lot of bloodshed for Americans to define and protect civil rights, but I think we all recognize them now. How long do you think we will squabble over the definition of parental rights?

[photo credit] Flickr: Phil Murphy