On cable news: Parental custody and gender identity, and a dramatic cave rescue

Fox News’ Laura Ingraham spoke to a Chicago mother about parenting and gender identity, and CNN’s Anderson Cooper spoke to an American caver who survived an emergency rescue mission.

Fox News — Parental custody and gender identity

On the “Ingraham Angle” on Wednesday night, Laura Ingraham spoke with a mother who says she lost custody of her 12-year-old daughter in 2019 over a gender-identity dispute.

Ingraham asked Jeanette Cooper how she lost custody of her daughter in Chicago and about a recently proposed bill in the state of California that would require parents to affirm their child’s identity.

The potential law being split between party lines in California would require “judges to consider whether a parent affirms their child’s gender identity when making custody and visitation decisions,” per The Associated Press.

“Well, after two and a half years of them coercing you into consenting to your own destruction, that’s how it works,” said Cooper, who is also one of the founders of Partners for Ethical Care. “When a custody evaluator determines that you are a serious endangerment to a child because you don’t believe even such a concept as gender identity, you have nowhere to go. The state has a lot of control.”

Ingraham asked, “These court-appointed arbiters can just come in and say, ‘Well, the child feels not supported by you, and it’s a hostile environment for the child for you not to agree with this new identity.’ Is that essentially how it went down?”

“Essentially,” Cooper said, “I mean, now the concept of parenting is to say ‘yes’ to your child for just about everything, and so if you say ‘no’ all of a sudden you’re unsafe.”

Ingraham then asked Cooper what parents need to understand about the issue.

“What we know is that you can affirm a child’s feelings without telling them that they’re true,” Cooper said. “If we snowplow everything out of their way, then they’ll never be able to cope with anything. We basically disable children when we continuously say ‘yes’ to everything that they say.”

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CNN — American caver rescued deep in Turkey cave

On “Anderson Cooper 360” Thursday night, Cooper interviewed American caver Mark Dickey, who survived being trapped in a cave in Turkey.

According to Cooper, Dickey became too weak to continue the journey after experiencing gastrointestinal bleeding at the surface of the cave, and “a rescue operation of about 200 people were involved to get him out.”

Dickey joined Cooper in an interview from the hospital to give a personal account of what transpired.

“What did you feel was wrong?” Cooper asked.

Dickey said that he was farther into the cave than base camp with his partner Jessica and started to experience a “crazy fast onset (with) dizziness, nausea and hot and cold (temperatures).”

His partner took 24 hours to get out of the cave, receive emergency help with medical supplies and bring it back to camp.

“She pulled off a miracle,” Dickey said.

Cooper asked how long it took the emergency team to get Dickey out, to which Dickey said, “So once things started, I was very impressed by how quickly it went. There were virtually no breaks. I was transitioning from team to team. I would maybe rest for an hour or two in between one team.”