All possible underlying causes
Bad.
A teenager has been taken into care in Australia’s first known case of parents being judged abusive and potentially harmful for failing to consent to their child’s self-declared transgender identity and wish for irreversible cross-sex hormone treatment.
In other words the state is telling parents “You have to let your child take cross-sex hormones or we will take the child away from you.”
A state children’s court magistrate cited the risk of self-harm when making the protection order in October — almost a year after the teenager, who was born female and cannot be named for legal reasons — was removed from the family by police at 15 after discussing suicide online.
How do we know the teenager won’t be discussing suicide again in 5 years, this time because of the irreversible hormones?
The parents said they knew their daughter had been depressed and in need of help, but they wanted an independent psychologist to consider all possible underlying causes, not just gender issues, and to look into non-invasive treatment options.
But the state knows better?
Queensland University’s dean of law Patrick Parkinson, speaking in a personal capacity as a family law expert and critic of “gender affirming” medical treatment for young people diagnosed with distressing “gender dysphoria”, said he believed the child removal was the first of its kind and “a very troubling development”.
…
Stuart Lindsay, a former Federal Circuit Court judge and critic of how the Family Court has handled gender treatment cases, said the request for a Supreme Court appeal was “an opportunity for a fresh look at this hotly contested area of medicine”.
But lawyers acting for the teenager have filed separate action — on November 7 they applied for approval to begin hormone therapy, with a preliminary hearing on Tuesday in the Family Court. It will be the first such case in which both parents oppose treatment.
It’s outrageous.
This is an appalling development. I hope that sanity prevails, and no doctor is prepared to risk their future on treating this child with unnecessary and dangerous drugs, let alone irreversible surgery.
I don’t know the details of Australian law, but in many places a 15 year old isn’t old enough to smoke, take a drink, get a tattoo, or have their ears pierced. But the magic of trans rights extends to whole-body modification via hormones and surgery?
John, there are many things a 15-year-old cannot do legally. Although ear piercing is not one of them.
Things a 15-year-old CAN do include gaining access to contraceptives and abortion because those are seen as a health treatment. I suspect that this case has been argued on the same grounds, that it is a health necessity so the child prevailed over the parents.
I have been unable to find who the law firm was that took on the case and who paid the bills.
Also, Keira Bell.
I have a question.
Let’s consider Jen, who was assigned female at birth and, for the first twelve years of her life, has been perfectly happy being a girl. Everybody around her considers Jen a girl.
It turns out Jen has 5-alpha-reductase deficiency. This means that at about 12, Jen will start to develop a penis. I am not making this condition up: It actually exists . The Dominican Republic even has a word for these people: guevedoces.
Jen is not happy to see a penis growing, and definitely does not want to grow up to be a man.
Would you recommend irreversible hormones for Jen? Or would you rather force her to go through puberty, even though it is giving her a penis she doesn’t want to have?
Sam, it is for conditions such as that one that puberty blockers were developed. Your question is irrelevant.
@acolyte – The question is relevant.
You are giving Jen puberty blockers to prevent a natural puberty that she doesn’t want to go through. You are not delaying the puberty, as is the case with precocious puberty; you are planning to prevent it entirely.
(And, if Jen is willing to go through the growth of a penis and become Jim, that’s fine, too! You don’t have to give him puberty blockers.)
If you are giving Jen the choice as to whether to become a woman or a man, you are ethically obligated to give everyone that choice. If twelve-year-old Jen is capable of making that choice, then any twelve-year-old is capable of making that said choice.