Yes, the main focus of the article is an obvious bit of insanity coming from the left, but I do have to wonder if this isn’t a preview of what’s to come during a Biden/Harris administration when they start putting their own people in charge of HHS, the FDA and other health agencies. Lauren McNamara (originally Zachary Antolak), known to her online followers as “Zinnia Jones,” proposed a rather stunning change to accepted medical practices this month in the interest of transgender somethingorother. The activist demanded that all prepubescent children should be given the right to have access to puberty-blocking drugs until they reach the age where they can “decide which gender they want to be.” And before you ask, no… she’s apparently not kidding. (For the record, I’m generically using a female pronoun because I have no idea who this person is nor what their surgical status might be aside from having been born male.) Details of the story come to us from The Blaze.
Lauren McNamara, known by followers as “Zinnia Jones,” argued earlier this month that children should be legally able to consent to the administration of puberty blockers since they already de facto consent to the “permanent and irreversible changes” that come naturally through puberty.
“If children can’t consent to puberty blockers which pause any permanent changes even with the relevant professional evaluation, how can they consent to the permanent and irreversible changes that come with their own puberty with no professional evaluation whatsoever?” she wrote on Twitter.
The YouTuber went on to argue that “an inability to offer informed consent or understand the long-term consequences is actually an argument for putting every single cis and trans person on puberty blockers until they acquire that ability.”
Hoo boy. I assume that “Ms.” Jones doesn’t regret making the statements because the tweets are still hanging out there.
If children can't consent to puberty blockers which pause any permanent changes even with the relevant professional evaluation, how can they consent to the permanent and irreversible changes that come with their own puberty with no professional evaluation whatsoever?
— Zinnia Jones (@ZJemptv) December 2, 2020
An inability to offer informed consent or understand the long-term consequences is actually an argument for putting every single cis and trans person on puberty blockers until they acquire that ability.
— Zinnia Jones (@ZJemptv) December 2, 2020
Obviously, this isn’t activism. It’s insanity, pure and simple. If somehow enacted, it would be criminal insanity, or at least it should be. In medical terms, this suggestion is a pile of hot garbage, not to mention being a series of logical fallacies.
Jones is complaining about children being unable to “consent” to the onset of puberty and the normal maturation of their bodies. That’s like arguing that you should be able to withhold “consent” to growing taller in case you decide later that you’d like to be a hobbit.
It’s bad enough that we already have people who are allegedly doctors in the United States prescribing puberty blockers for children whose parents have decided that they are transgender when they are far too young to deal with questions about gender and sexuality. Those are potentially dangerous drugs, such as Lupron, as we’ve discussed here before. Those drugs are typically only prescribed for a short period of time to ward off the effects of precocious puberty, also known as early-onset puberty. They have never been approved by the FDA for use in gender dysphoria in prepubescent children.
And do we really need to touch on the fact that children are not legally recognized as having the maturity to grant informed consent for medical procedures? You can go to jail for giving a tattoo to anyone under the age of 18. But hey… let’s just let 8-year-olds start mainlining Lupron if someone convinces them they were born “the wrong gender.”
The damage these “treatments” can wreak on the body of a growing child could well be permanent. And now we have activists wanting to make this practice available to any child in the country without even needing the consent of the parents? Again… this is nothing short of criminal insanity. But if we see the Democrats putting too many woke social justice warriors in positions of authority over the next four years, it’s an insanity that could potentially turn into official government policy.
UPDATE: Please see this column from attorney Hans Bader. “Transgender treatment is medical malpractice for many teens.”
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