Gender clinic defends use of puberty blockers for under-13s
A TRANSGENDER clinic offers “fairytale” promises to children because they are unable to give their consent to the sex change process, the High Court has heard.
The case has been brought by 23-yearold Keira Bell, who began treatment to become a boy at 16 before later detransitioning, and “Mrs A”, the unnamed mother of a 16-year-old girl who is on the waiting list to change gender.
They claim that anyone aged 18 and under should only be prescribed hormone blockers – which delay the onset of puberty – with court supervision in place. Their legal action is against the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust, which runs the country’s only gender identity clinic for children.
Lawyers representing Keira Bell and Mrs A argue that children going through puberty are “not capable of properly understanding the nature and effects of hormone blockers”.
They argue that there is “a very high likelihood” that children who start taking hormone blockers will later begin taking cross-sex hormones, which they say cause “irreversible changes”.
Ms Bell and Mrs A are asking the High Court to rule it unlawful for children who wish to undergo gender reassignment to be prescribed hormone blockers without an order from the court that such treatment is in their “best interests”.
At a hearing in London yesterday, Jeremy Hyam QC, the pair’s barrister, said that it was “simply a fairy tale” to think children of 13 or under can give informed consent to receive hormone blockers to delay puberty, adding that “a child who can’t consent to any sexual activity, can’t possibly give consent” to this treatment.
“We can’t accept there can be an ageappropriate discussion of the experiences a child has no experience of. It’s just an affront to common sense to think that person is giving consent to that process,” said Mr Hyam.
Children cannot properly understand the “lifelong medical, psychological and emotional i mplications” of taking “experimental” puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, Mr Hyam also told the court.
The barrister said that referrals to the NHS Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) had risen from 97 in 2009 to 2,590 in 2018, “essentially a twentyfold increase”.
In a witness statement before the court, Ms Bell added: “I made a brash decision as a teenager, as a lot of teenagers do, trying to find confidence and happiness, except now the rest of my life will be negatively affected.”
However, Fenella Morris QC, representing the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust, said the contention that children could not give informed consent to being prescribed hormone blockers was “a radical proposition”.
She added that the majority of children referred to GIDS between March 2019 and 2020 were over 12, with only 13 of the children referred being under the age of 13.
She accepted that hormone blockers were “experimental” but argued their use “has been widely researched and debated for three decades”, adding: “It is a safe and reversible treatment with a well-established history.”
The hearing before Dame Victoria Sharp, Mr Justice Lewis and Mrs Justice Lieven is expected to last two days and it is expected that the court will reserve its judgment to a later date.