By Madeleine Kearns
Tuesday, December 15, 2020
There is perhaps no aspect of the gender-identity debate
more emotionally fraught than the question of what to do about children who say
they are transgender. In recent years, lavishly funded transgender-lobby groups
have fought hard to implement what they claim is a medical “pause button”
whereby gender-dysphoric children and young people are administered
“puberty-blocking” drugs that, activists claim, buy these minors more time on
the road to transition.
Only the most pernicious of euphemisms can justify such a
gung-ho approach to this medical intervention. For not only are these drugs
experimental, but they are also, in almost every instance, followed by a
regimen of cross-sex hormones that compromises a young person’s fertility and
sexual function. Puberty blockers are not a “pause button,” then, but a nuclear
button, setting children on the path to irreversible bodily impairment they may
well deeply regret. (This, of course, is to say nothing of the fact that the
vast majority of children grow
out of gender dysphoria by late adolescence.)
So just when, exactly, is a young person competent to
consent to such treatment? At 13 or younger? “Highly unlikely.” What about at
14 or 15? “Doubtful.” How about at 16 or 17? Well, since the drugs are
“experimental” and “truly life-changing,” even clinicians treating those nearly
at the age of legal adulthood must first consult the courts before prescribing
them. But don’t take my word for it: This is the ruling of England’s High
Court, which, earlier this month, decreed that children are unable to consent
to transgender medical interventions.
The High Court case was brought against the Gender
Identity Development Service (GIDS) clinic at the Tavistock Hospital in London
by Keira Bell, a 23-year-old woman who began to medically transition (FtM) at
the clinic in adolescence but has since reverted to a female identity, and by
“Mrs. A,” a mother seeking to prevent the clinic from prescribing puberty
blockers to her 15-year-old autistic daughter. Though the decision may still be
appealed, the ruling could not have been clearer.
On the steps on the court, Bell — now, due to “gender
reassignment,” a breastless young woman with a deep gravelly voice — spoke of a
“complacent and dangerous culture at the heart of the national center
responsible for treating children and young people with gender dysphoria” as
well as of gender clinicians “playing God with our bodies.” An awkward, anxious
teenager, Bell grew up with an alcoholic mother and without a father in the
home. Though her courage is remarkable, her story is regrettably familiar.
Feeling rejected at school and different from her peers, Bell first found the
so-called trans community online; then, inspired by trans activists on YouTube,
decided she was really a boy. Bell was referred to GIDS at age 16. Clinicians
explained that she would be infertile, but she says now that “I was a teenager;
I couldn’t imagine wanting a baby.”
Mrs. A spoke with a similar hope that their case would
change the fortunes of others. In a statement read out on her behalf, she said:
“I hope this judgment will provide a safety net to prevent the unsupervised
medical experimentation on children, like my daughter, by an institution
charged with helping to alleviate her distress.” The spike in numbers and
disproportionate representation of girls in particular should have prompted
greater caution. The number of minors referred increased from 97 in 2009 to
2,519 in 2018. There was a 4,000 percent increase in the number of girls. Paul
Conrathe, the solicitor representing Bell and Mrs. A, called the decision “a
damning indictment of clinical practice at the Tavistock” as well as a
“historic judgment” showing how “a culture of unreality has become embedded in
the Tavistock.”
Indeed, the GIDS has been dogged with scandal after
scandal as whistleblowers reported to the Times of London that children
came into the clinic with a host of complex co-morbidities to their gender
dysphoria — anxiety, depression, eating disorders, sexual abuse, homophobic
bullying — but were, on declaring a transgender identity, put on the conveyer
belt of transition. One clinician told the Times of London: “The
Tavistock were given chance after chance to moderate their approach, after
staff voiced our concerns, but they essentially called us transphobic. The High
Court has said no, we weren’t transphobic, and the judges agreed with our
concerns.”
Though there is much to be done by all concerned
citizens, the fight to protect vulnerable minors from gender ideology will be
ultimately won by those worst affected by it. Still, the case of Keira Bell and
Mrs. A ought to inspire hope. They represent a victim and a protector — and
remind us that together, theirs is a powerful voice.
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