Fox News host Maria Bartiromo railed at New York Democrats for recently passing a bill that removes the legal terms “mother” and “father” from state family laws, swapping them with gender-neutral phrases like “gestating parent” and “non-gestating parent.”
“What are we doing here?” Bartiromo’s guest, Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.), complained of the bill before Bartiromo interjected to rant about the pending legislation during Sunday’s episode of “Sunday Morning Futures.”
“So we’re not supposed to say mother and father now? We can’t say mother and — you know what? That’s disgusting! OK?” Bartiromo exclaimed.
“What a mother goes through — a woman goes through to have a child and to raise that child and parent — now we have to take that away from them [by not] calling them mother,” she added.
Senate Bill S9316 passed in New York State Senate last week after moving forward through the State Assembly in March. It was sent to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s desk earlier this month and awaits final approval.
The bill’s memo claimed the change in terms would promote inclusivity, while critics of the bill have argued the change is not needed, FOX 5 New York reported last week.
The bill also sparked backlash from multiple lawmakers, including Republican nominee for governor of New York, Bruce Blakeman, who called it “insanity” in an X post Friday.
“In Kathy Hochul’s New York, ‘mom’ is now defined as ‘gestating parent,’” Blakeman wrote. “Not when I’m Governor! I’ll stand up for moms and dads against this insanity.”
“This bill is a continuation of Hochul’s war on families, and I won’t stop fighting until we take New York back,” he added in a separate X post on Friday.
Tenney also slammed the bill in a Thursday X post, writing, “The party that can’t define a woman is now rewriting New York law to erase mothers and fathers. Only in Albany could ‘mom’ and ‘dad’ become too controversial.”