"The alternative, is that you are directing these kids to go through a puberty they do not want, and then face painful surgeries in later life to reverse that puberty.
Regret levels are extremely low, and no-one is advocating hormone therapy or surgeries until these kids are 18.
The parents are allowed to make the decisions for their children, as we all do. That is appropriate and I don't question others who would know their children best."
I have been on the other side of this fence. You are looking at a population of which up to 40 percent in some studies are autistic. Autistic people have difficulty socially, specialist, interest led brains, and difficulty in thinking flexibly. It's part of what makes autistic people amazing. It also makes them very vulnerable in this situation.
Socially you don't fit in and you are motivated to search out why. You find puberty anathema as it is in itself a huge changed- base upheaval. You research. You become intellectually fixed on a solution that appears to make sense.
At the moment as a parent of an autistic teen in this situation just about the only thing you have going for you is treatment times and the gradual maturation and acceptance of the changed body of puberty that maturation brings. It is a huge relief to be able to accept your child but say that sadly, there isn't anything we can do about this medically until you are an adult. Change your name, your pronouns, your hair, your dress - all this is reversible and benign. Enabling teens to pressure parents into providing consent puts parents in an impossible position in those situations where the parent does have valid concerns. It could and likely will cause breakdowns in relationships within families, where the parent has reservations that may well be based on a better recollection of early childhood presentation, identification with own gender up to puberty etc
My autistic teen now says that he was suffering with mental ill health, depressed and dysphoric during the three years that he adopted a female identity. Thank goodness I was never put in a position of being asked to gatekeep his access to medications that at the time, he fervently believed were a solution to his issues.
It needs to be recognised that teens who first express discomfort with their gender as they approach puberty or in early puberty are on the whole a different group from the early onset persistent and consistent tiny group of youngsters and may well need a different treatment approach. You can't just treat symptoms as if everyone is the same. It's like giving everyone presenting with breathing issues an asthma inhaler, regardless of whether the cause is a chest infection, asthma, pneumonia, covid, or lung cancer.