NEW: Grounds in support of intervention in the Bell v Tavistock JR appeal published

Have people seen the tweet from The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists .. nothing surprises me anymore. Nothing.

twitter.com/RCObsGyn/status/1354024000838627331

They give no fucks about abortion rights. Just as they give no fucks about gay conversion therapy. Or the sensitivities of women who do not menstruate. Or the women of colour they so often co-opt.

They're not trying to protect any of these rights or groups of people. They are leveraging slogans to emotionally manipulate. If they actually gave a crap about children with gender dysphoria they'd be pouring their energies into campaigning for world class care for those children, not attempting to throw up dust about rights which are not even slightly threatened by ensuring the best care for these kids.

I know Bunting. Not saying for a moment that the organisations involved have even the smallest interest in securing such an outcome.

Just that, if they are able to draw a line between the arguments they don't like and abortion rights, why can't they draw and consider a similar and pretty obvious line in relation to the arguments they do like?

It's basic critical thinking?

It doesn't make any sense at all. Anyone with the smallest experience of these children knows they are highly influenced, often negatively, by online pressure. ROGD, which many parents think is responsible for the huge increase in children showing up to these clinics, relies on Internet pressure.

Many have suffered from past trauma. And aren't looked after children particularly susceptible?

The thing that characterises these children is their vulnerability, not their wisdom. I have no idea how they are going to spin it as the opposite.

But I would caution anyone posting to be too much more direct about what we are alluding to, as, yes, even on a parenting website, it is likely to get you deleted. Hell, I might even face the chop myself for my oblique references.

You do not have to be remotely tin foil hatted to know that the argument that some children are wise beyond their years and therefore able to consent has horrendous provenance.

Bunting I'm honestly not a conspiracy theorist. But I'm really saddened that apparently all of these organisations are able to twistily extrapolate that Kiera's judgement threatens abortion rights, and yet cannot take the much more direct path to the risks to children if you say knowledge = consent.

I've only had very limited professional engagement with safeguarding principles and procedures, but that would be my first thought. What else might children know about but not, legally, be able to consent to? Sad that GIRES, and especially Brooks, couldn't work it out.

Have I got this right?

• The relevant part of the original judgment that they are not contesting is that “informed consent” must include consideration of factors that one can only understand through actually experiencing them, eg. orgasm, adult potential for fertility, sexual and fertility factors in adult relationships.

• What they are claiming is that children who believe they are the opposite sex (including those who have been led to believe they are opposite sex by adults interpreting their behaviour) have a special super-power that enables them to bypass the normal need to a) experience these things and b) to consider them with adult understanding, in order to take them into account.

Is that right??

Traditionally, if a young lesbian took part in a legal case alleging that a clinic had failed in its medical and safeguarding responsibilities and gone on to give her (and other young women like her) inappropriate treatment, Stonewall would be on her side.

Instead, Stonewall is intervening to support the clinic?

You say ‘toemaytoe’, I say ‘tomato’
You say ‘versed’, I say ‘coached’
Versed, Coached
Versed, Coached
Let’s let you have what (you think) you want.

Yes I noticed that too - the intervenors said the ruling was partly because of the information being given to to the children. But as I read it, the judges explicitly said it wasn't about the information, it was about the child's capacity to give informed consent based on that information.

The level of credulous ignorance among people who manage to otherwise live adult lives astounds me.

This astounds me, surely just one young person regretting the irreversible surgeries and hormone treatments performed on them as a child is enough to cast doubt on the whole process. Let alone the hundreds all over Twitter regretting what was 'done to them'. How do these people even sleep at night.

Good to see all their arguments out in the open for others to see

I'm very confused about this assertion in the grounds to intervene that being 'well-informed' is the same as being 'competent', in the Gillick sense. You can have as much information as you like, if you don't have the emotional, intellectual, experience-based framework to contextualise that information, and if you haven't yet developed the tools to weigh up choices and make decisions, you cannot be competent. It's a really important category error. Gillick surely is predicated on the idea that it is these abilities that develop over time, they can't be 'educated' or 'enforced', they are developmental. In the same way that we wouldn't expect a four month old to walk, no matter how many different ways we try to teach them. They simply don't have the capacity to do it yet.

Charlie I agree. Perhaps our erstwhile band of interveeners haven't kept up with what's going on in the courts

As for anything to do with the NHS, it's been rogue for some time imnobody wonder when it'll get back to doing it's job

29 January is only a directions hearing. It'll be a while before the sides are in court arguing their case.

twitter.com/NoXYinXXprisons/status/1351669294346723337

bloody hell, did anyone in these organisations actually read the judgement?

Yes, it seems so.

There are some great posts on this thread

Good grief - this tweet from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. Is this twitter thread going rogue or is this their actual position
twitter.com/RCObsGyn/status/1354024000838627331?s=19
We support @StonewallUK and the @GoodLawProject in their intervention. We remain concerned about the potential effect the Court’s judgement will have on children and young people’s access to sexual and reproductive healthcare.

www.hilldickinson.com/insights/articles/conventional-wisdom-prevails-refusal-consent-medical-treatment-gillick-competent

(In this case, the child refused consent and was overruled, but the court stated this also applied where a child has consented to a treatment the court then considers to pose a risk to the child's health.) If I'm reading this right, this will strengthen Keira's case at appeal.

This is going to fascinating to follow.

It really is.

Very much looking forward to seeing how this case is heard.