After a British court ruled that children under the age of 16 could not give informed consent to be prescribed puberty-blocking drugs, a well-known transgender activist suggested that all children should be put on such drugs until they are old enough to decide which gender they wish to be.
According to the BBC, Keira Bell, 23, sued the British National Health Service’s Tavistock Center, “which runs the UK’s only gender-identity development service,” for putting her on puberty blockers at age 16 at her request. “She argued the clinic should have challenged her more over her decision to transition to a male as a teenager.”
Another plaintiff, known only as Mrs. A., sought to prevent her 15-year-old autistic daughter from being prescribed similar treatment without her mother’s consent. “She said it was ‘frightening’ there was so little exploration of why a child might be feeling they were the wrong sex before puberty blockers were given,” reported the BBC.
The U.K. High Court decided in favor of the plaintiffs.
“It is highly unlikely that a child aged 13 or under would be competent to give consent to the administration of puberty blockers,” the court wrote. “It is doubtful that a child aged 14 or 15 could understand and weigh the long-term risks and consequences of the administration of puberty blockers.”
“In respect of young persons aged 16 and over, the legal position is that there is a presumption that they have the ability to consent to medical treatment.”
This common-sense decision — that people who, because of their immaturity, are legally barred from making many other life-altering decisions should also be prohibited from altering their gender — did not sit well with transgender activists. Many of them, after all, want kids of any age to be able to seek treatment to change their bodies to match their “gender identity.”
One self-identified atheist trans activist went even further. Lauren McNamara, a transgender female who was born Zachary Antolak and goes by the name Zinnia Jones on social media, argued that if some children aren’t allowed to choose to have their puberty blocked because they are not mature enough to give consent to such a procedure, all kids might as well have their puberty blocked until they reach the age at which they are permitted to decide which gender they want to be.
“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?” Jones, whose self-description is “adult demon female,” asked on Twitter.
Thus, Jones concluded, “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.”
In other words, simply maturing the way humans have done throughout history is now somehow a choice to be delayed rather than a natural process to be welcomed. As Jones put it in another tweet, “Natal puberty became optional the moment technology became available to enable deliberate choice between natal puberty and puberty induced by cross-sex hormones.”
Contra Jones, puberty blockers do not merely delay the onset of puberty, allowing it to be resumed whenever the patient so desires. “Side effects of puberty-suppressing drugs include abnormal bone and brain development along with sex organ stunting, dysfunction, and potential sterility,” noted CBN News. Bell claimed in her lawsuit “that the cross-sex hormones permanently damaged her body and could have left her barren.”
But in Jones’ twisted mind — the activist is in sexual relationships with two other people, one a biological woman and one a trans woman, and believes men who don’t desire relationships with trans women are “exclusionary” — the chance of permanently damaging the bodies of billions of children is worth it to advance the notion that gender is a choice, not a genetically determined fact. (This, of course, is precisely the opposite of what these same folks tell us about sexual orientation, whose nature is somewhat less clear.)
The last word on Jones’ ravings goes to former Fox News and NBC News host Megyn Kelly, who tweeted: “It’s time to stop being afraid. Fight this awful abusive insanity. Children must be protected from these unwell activists.”
