Australian LGBT laws vs UK verdict
by Claire Chandler, MercatorNet:
In light of the verdict on the Keira Bell case, are Australian legislators rushing in the wrong direction?
Last week in the United Kingdom, a momentous judgement with international implications was handed down by the High Court. The court found in favour of the arguments put forward by the mother of a child with gender dysphoria and Keira Bell, a brave 23-year-old woman who had at 16 been prescribed puberty blockers after three short appointments with the Tavistock youth gender clinic.
The judges in this case observed that prescribing puberty blockers to children with gender dysphoria is an experimental treatment with real uncertainty over the short- and long-term consequences of the treatment and with very limited evidence as to its efficacy. Given the potential lifelong effects on fertility, sexual function, bone density and development of these treatments, as well as a lack of evidence of their full long-term impacts, the court found that children are very unlikely to be able to adequately understand and give informed consent to these experimental treatments.
This judgement has profound implications for Australia, not that you would know it from the muted — in some cases, non-existent — coverage by many Australian media outlets. Let’s look at what’s happening right now in Australia and how out of step it is with what has been found in the UK High Court.
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