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UK ruling shows importance of caring for trans youth
What is happening? Every day I open the Sydney Morning Herald there is another trans related article. Soon we will squeeze out the sports section (dream on Adrian), I’ve posted this in the “Big Bad World” because hopefully the changes it describes will not be inflicted on Australians.
From the Sydney Morning Herald 14/12/2020.
Written by Fiona Bisshop – the president of the Australian Professional Association for Trans Health and a Brisbane GP.Trans youth are not disordered – but we must look out for them
The decision by the British High Court that people aged under 16 cannot consent to puberty blockers is unjust and cruel and its ramifications will be felt around the world, including in Australia.
Quote:We know young people who are prescribed puberty blockers get immediate relief from their gender dysphoria and distress because this medication prevents permanent physical changes to voice, hair growth and breast development. Yet a young trans person in Britain must now go to court and let a judge decide whether they can start such treatment, even if their doctors and parents agree to it – a judge who is not a doctor and who has no training in the medical care of trans and gender diverse youth.Imagine a 12-year-old, presumed male at birth, who since they were first able to talk has identified as female. They have started to notice their voice is changing and are terrified of what lies ahead – growing tall, getting facial hair and a big Adam’s apple. This fear leads to anxiety, school refusal, social phobia, self-harm and suicidal thoughts. This is a common trajectory for many transgender teens forced to experience a puberty that does not align with their personal gender experience. By the time they are adult, many will develop severe depression or post traumatic stress disorder and some will have died by suicide.
My adult trans patients all agree that preventing changes during puberty would have been life-changing for them – for trans women, the deep voice and facial hair they developed during puberty causes them great difficulty, effort and expense to change. It singles them out in public, leading to discrimination, transphobic violence and ensuing mental health complications. For trans men, breast development means they have to wear painful chest binders or go through costly, painful and scarring top surgery.
Most trans children will not regret their decision to take puberty blockers. Paediatric gender clinics in Australia and overseas recognise that children whose gender identity is stable upon entering puberty, and who have extreme distress when pubertal changes begin, will continue to be transgender. These are the very people who need puberty blockers. Yet the British court partly based their ruling on evidence that 85 per cent or more of trans youth will stop being trans once they have gone through puberty. This notion is profoundly wrong and based on very old data.
It’s not the only thing the court got wrong. It referred to gender dysphoria as a psychological condition when the World Health Organisation now accepts that being transgender is not a mental health condition. Gender diversity is not pathological. It is part of the normal human spectrum of existence. Trans kids are not disordered.
The judges also noted that most gender dysphoric children who were placed on blockers went on to receive gender-affirming hormone therapy (GAHT), which causes permanent changes in a patient. They went on to make the incorrect deduction that blockers always lead to GAHT, when they should have instead realised that this fact meant the right group of children were being treated with blockers in the first place.
Blockers and GAHT are not the same thing yet the court treated them as such, deciding that a child under 16 could never fully comprehend the ramifications of GAHT and therefore they could not consent to either GAHT or blockers.
The judgment lacks any compassion or acknowledgement of the level of distress that young people with gender dysphoria suffer. The judges seemed more concerned with the small possibility of regret than with the risks inherent in denying trans youth the chance to avoid permanent and devastating physical changes to their bodies.
…. read the rest of the article here
The author concludes:
In my opinion, the only thing this ruling proves is that we should never be complacent when it comes to safeguarding the health and wellbeing of our trans and gender-diverse children. -
4 Replies
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A statement signed by practically all of the worlds organisations involved in Transgender Health including AUSPATH has been prepared disagreeing strongly with the UK court ruling of witholding puberty blocker treatment for adolescents under 16.
It urges the repeal of the court ruling.Let’s see what happens …
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I fail to see how this extension of a court decision could be interpreted as being just! How is it that if the parents concent to their child’s need that a court has to be involved at all?
Perhaps it may be due to unacceptance in the education sector ( Schools) that influence the desire for UK courts to be involved or perhaps even still the antiquated class ruling in the UK that still exists today.
Whatever the reason it appears, on the surface, an attempt to interfere with basic human rights and freedom of choice.
How 19th century! -
Sounds to me a decision made in Victorian England.
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An update from Pink News….
Later in December, the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust, which runs the UK’s only gender identity clinic for trans children, began the process of appealing ruling.
In March 2021, the High Court partially reversed its ruling, saying that a “loving parent” can consent to a child taking puberty blockers.
In the ruling, Justice Nathalie Lieven said that while the Bell case found it was unlikely that children could be found competent enough to consent to the gender-affirming care, “the key difference from Bell is that parents are, in general, in a position to understand and weigh up these matters and consider what is in the long and short term best interests of their child.”
She continued: “They are adults with full capacity and as the people who know their child best, and care for them the most, will be in a position to reach a fully informed decision… I agree with the view expressed that judges do not necessarily know best, and that judges should be slow to displace the decision making role of committed and loving parents.”
The Good Law Project said in a statement: “The decision is hugely significant. The barriers to accessing puberty blockers through the Tavistock were already enormous. Very few children were able to overcome them without parental support.
“The decision means that children with that support will no longer be barred from accessing puberty blockers by the Bell decision. It is not unreasonable to describe this morning’s decision as in large part reversing the practical effects of Bell.”
