Maybe states need to stop “but think of the children!!!” laws that compel companies to add these features, when the real threats facing children are republicans who want to personally check their gender so “boys don’t play girls sports”.

Apple fought this, as commented before but if a law is enacted, regardless of how stupid it is, Apple is forced to comply with it along with all other tech companies. By baking it into the OS, Apple is at least making it a privacy-conscious way to pass an age range to apps that need verification too without forcing a user to give up private data to every app without proper privacy safeguards. In essence Apple is verifying in a private way and using that decision as a “we got it” verification apps can rely on.