Here’s some potentially good news to share today and for once it has nothing to do with the you-know-what story that’s drowning the news cycle. Across the pond in Great Britain, the other half of our special relationship has announced a change to their medical system that’s making the United States look pretty bad by comparison. The Brits have been dealing with their own wave of transgender unrest just as we have in America. But going forward, they’re not going to allow doctors to perform “transitional” (and irreversible) “gender correction” surgery on children. How surprisingly sane of them. (Telegraph)
Children who wish to undergo surgery to change their gender will be banned from doing so in future, the equalities minister has announced.
In a landmark move, which has been criticised by trans rights charities as introducing “a new form of inequality into British medical practice”, Liz Truss said that the Government will set out details of the plans later this summer.
Currently, people under the age of 18 are allowed surgery but with parental consent.
In addition to this new rule, the Equalities Minister said that the revamped Gender Recognition Act would also include the “extremely important protection of single-sex spaces.” That’s obviously going to have members of some progressive groups setting their hair on fire.
The first question to address here is how the Brits managed to beat us to the punch on this one. As I’ve written here more times than I can count, what consenting adults choose to do with their own bodies is their business, providing they are willing to accept responsibility for the consequences later on. Provided it can’t be shown that an adult was somehow tricked or coerced into having such a procedure done, they should not be allowed to bring suit against the doctor or hospital if they come to regret their choice later, at least not unless we manage to introduce some badly needed changes into how these practices are regulated. (More on that in a moment.)
But children are a different matter entirely. In virtually every aspect of American law, children are not considered to be legally capable of offering informed consent. This applies to sexual activity and a host of other topics. In the United States, you can’t give a child an aspirin in school without a signed consent form from a parent. If you give a child a tattoo you can literally go to jail in some states.
But for some insane reason, if a child is suffering from some form of gender confusion or dysphoria, you can get a doctor to introduce unnatural hormones into their bodies, stave off the natural onset of puberty and, in some cases, allow them to undergo irreversible surgery. At least with a tattoo, there are laser procedures available to get it removed later on. You can not have a penis attached or a vagina reconstructed to full functionality after the patient has been mutilated.
Further, as I’ve also stated here in the past, I can not understand how these sorts of procedures don’t fall under the category of medical malpractice. Doctors performing these procedures on children shouldn’t just have their licenses revoked. They should be in jail.
Perhaps someone from the Equality Minister’s office could fly over to the United States one of these days and have a chat with our members of Congress. It’s a travesty that we would need to have someone from another country explain something so obvious to our elected officials.
