A mother has been arrested for allowing her 10-year-old son to get a tattoo in New York, where it’s legal for surgeons to perform gender reassignment surgeries and hand out puberty blockers.
According to The New York Times, a school nurse called the police last month after the boy came to her office asking for Vaseline for the new tattoo.
It is illegal in the state for people under the age of 18 to get inked regardless of whether they have parental consent.
The Times went on to discuss the trend of young people getting tattoos, quoting a physician aligned with the American Academy of Pediatric Medicine opposed to the “troubling” practice.
Yet as societal mores around tattooing shift — nearly half of all millennials have tattoos, compared with only 13 percent of the boomer generation, according to a 2015 survey by the Harris Poll — there is a wide spectrum of responses to tattoos on young people. There is no federal minimum age for tattoos, and state laws vary widely. Some mirror New York’s strict over-18 rules. Some permit tattooing with parental consent for people as young as 14 years old. About a dozen, including Ohio, West Virginia and Vermont, allow it with parental blessing and do not specify any minimum age.
It is a situation that Dr. Cora Bruener, a pediatrician and professor at the University of Washington Medical Center’s Seattle Children’s Hospital, and author of guidance on tattoos for pediatricians, issued by the American Academy of Pediatric Medicine, finds troubling.
“It is a permanent mark or a symbol you are putting on your body, and I don’t think kids under 18 have that kind of agency to make a decision,” Dr. Bruener said. “We need to look at these laws again.”
Conservatives pointed out the glaring double standard.
“It is a permanent mark or a symbol you are putting on your body, and I don’t think kids under 18 have that kind of agency to make a decision,” Dr. Bruener said.
— Tom Bevan (@TomBevanRCP) November 15, 2022
But puberty blockers and top surgery for kids under 18 is just fine....https://t.co/hhjwBPNwwF pic.twitter.com/ItX8Njnar2
Amazing. The article quotes an official with the American Academy of Pediatrics who says that kids don't have the "agency" to permanently alter their bodies. And yet the American Academy of Pediatrics fully endorses gender transitions for minors. https://t.co/1emRoJOz73
— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) November 14, 2022
I think people are far more likely to regret taking puberty blockers + opposite-sex hormones as children — rendering them sterile, impotent, sexually and physically undeveloped, etc. — or having body parts surgically removed, than an ink drawing that can be removed with a laser.
— Stephen Miller (@StephenM) November 14, 2022
Yeah, that’s abusive. Glad she was arrested. A kid isn’t old enough to consent to permanent damage to the body. Now if we could just apply the same punishment to parents who put their kids on puberty blockers, we’d be getting somewhere. https://t.co/78KkZqmFWW
— Allie Beth Stuckey (@conservmillen) November 14, 2022