Susie Green (former Mermaids CEO) sets up clinic to bypass ban on puberty blockers for children

[zibzibara]

https://inews.co.uk/news/mermaids-ceo-clinic-avoid-ban-puberty-blockers-children-3179213

The main route is enabled by a simple, glaring omission in the legislation: the government could have banned the importation of puberty blockers but did not.

Green told i she sought legal advice from David Lock KC, one of the lawyers challenging the ban in the high court, and prior to that had contacted Jolyon Maugham, a KC, and a campaigner for trans rights. He is the director of the Good Law Project, which is supporting the high court case.

[...]

Green, using this advice, established a route by which she believes her clinic can help provide puberty blockers to under-18s. First, Anne Health is hiring clinicians – nurses, doctors, and endocrinologists – who are not based in the UK (even though the company is) which means their specialist doctors in the European Economic Area are free to write prescriptions and “are regulated by their own medical bodies outside of the UK”.

Then, once prescribed, because the ban relates to England, Wales and Scotland but not Northern Ireland, the prescriptions will be sent to alternative addresses in Northern Ireland, from where patients from mainland Britain can collect them. “We’ve got a network of Northern Ireland families who are willing to take receipt of medication sent to them,” said Green. “The families just need to go over there and the kids need to get the medication and if they bring it back it exploits this legal loophole.”

Reduced mental capacity will make dealing with and overcoming mental health issues that much more difficult as well.
These poor kids are going to have terrible life outcomes

With the puberty blocker ban now covering NI will Susie's plan now be kaput? Or in thory if the prescriptions are sent to someone in Dublin instead of Belfast, could they be filled and collected from there?

SG has said that even if they close the NI loophole she's got another one.

That doesn't surprise me. She will have plenty of people helping her.

She must be allowed to harm other people's children to justify harming her own. There will always be something else that she tries as otherwise she'll have to admit what she did.

I don't think what SG says is reliable evidence of what the truth is. She may or may not have/find another loophole, but it is likely to be shut down, whatever it is.

It's tragic that she is not using her commitment to the cause by helping gender distressed kids deal with the impact of PBs no longer being an option.

Through my work, I have met over 50 families who have children approaching puberty in the next couple of years who believe that they have a life ahead of them inhabiting a body that will 'pass'. They have been told that, when the time comes, they will have the option of PBs and then cross sex hormones. Decisions made by the family to socially transition / conceal a child's natal sex have been made with this in mind.

I completely understand the distress and panic these families are having about the PB decision. It really is devastating for them. Most have much wider problems going on that overwhelm them (many/most of the trans identities, in my view, arise from these). Dealing with a puberty none of them thought they'd have to navigate will have catastrophic effect unless robust support is put in place.

However, the solution is not to make PB available, legally or through a loop hole.

I am hopeful that, going forward, not having the option of PBs will force / allow for the real underlying issues for the gender distress to be confronted or addressed. Of course, what is also needed is services who are willing and able to provide the right type of support (unlike what was being provided by the Tavi).

Whilst I fundamentally disagree with the likes of JM and SG, I can see why they seem so desperate. They know what's at stake for many families. They rightly think (in my view) that many/most people are oblivious to how much whole families have riding of PB being available. However, they need to quickly regroup and think if not PBs then what. They need to focus on lobbying for more and better mental health support that will address the distress (not mask or postpone it).

Yes, more and better health support. From very different directions (two of which are the lack of appropriate intensive support for young people with a range of difficulties that express themselves as gender dysphoria, and the Valdo Calocones incident which brought into focus the appalling mistreatment - or non-treatment of severely ill people with psychosis), we must surely be brought to a recognition that mental health services in this country are way beyond broken and that mending them is a national emergency.

Thank you for the detail and nuance you have added to this discussion here.

The great missing link is adequate holistic mental health care for distressed children, and research into and prevention of factors exacerbating trauma and depression in young people.

They need to focus on lobbying for more and better mental health support

That would be a fine focal point for the energy, money, time, and other resources and more likely to achieve a useful shift. Maybe it would lead to a national conversation about the over-concentration of NHS spending in secondary care rather than primary and community care, on physical conditions etc.

"Dealing with a puberty none of them thought they'd have to navigate will have catastrophic effect unless robust support is put in place"

If that robust support was put in place, do you think many families would engage with it?

Don't these families view any MH interventions, particularly ones provided by the NHS or informed by Cass, as Conversion Therapy?

They don't want an intervention. They want a magic bullet that doesn't exist.

The whole point is they are living in a state of deliberate denial.

The parents ARE the problem.

If you take that as your starting point then you come to very different conclusion about how to handle it.

No prepubertal child should be promised off label drugs in service of the impossible.

Teens independently finding out about transition medication and surgery via YouTube or TikTok is one thing, what has happened to gender non conforming children socially transed by parents in primary school is a completely different scenario.

Little kids rarely have any distress about their bodies, they just like the stuff stereotypically associated with the opposite sex. All the fear of puberty stuff is adult projection onto them, which they then absorb because children believe their care givers (hence Santa & the Tooth Fairy being A Thing).

The few primary schoolers who do hate their sexed bodies seem to be abuse survivors, so should be known to social services and given psychological support not assisted to self harm.

My blood ran cold when I read the words “a pre pubertal pathway” for those even SG thinks too young for puberty blockers . You can bet your bottom dollar that that pathway runs straight as a die to the door marked “Medication Room” with no side turnings or u turns allowed.

It would honestly not surprise me if Susie Green ended up making DIY oestrogen in her own bathtub and selling it in carparks.

Presenting it as 'life-saving medecine' to cure all ills.

Exactly. No child is born transsexual.

I think I've found her next sales method

I read of a detrarioner who had been making her own testosterone so, yes, maybe SG will go full on Walter.

“say my name”

It’s not even rare.

search Reddit trans for DIY. They’re all doing it. Thousands of them.

How on earth do they make “do it yourself” hormones?

SG has said that even if they close the NI loophole she's got another one

If she carries on encouraging/facilitating the provision of PBs via whatever route/loophole she comes up with is there a possibility of her being prosecuted?

Get them out of other drugs that HRT patches etc probably. But it’s worth remembering you can make fentanyl in a bucket using chemicals bought off Ali express. If someone will pay someone will make it for you.

Hopefully.

There was a protest yesterday in Belfast against the decision to ban puberty blockers for 'gender affirming care' so I think there must be a NI ruling? I'm from here. Obviously didn't attend!!

Yes, there has been a three month pause that Health Minister Mike Nesbitt has now extended. It's interesting that SF's Michelle O'Neill supported the ban - given SF's stance on Trans issues. I saw the protest on UTV news - they all looked as though they could do with some fresh air and sunshine! The Belfast Lord Mayor came out to support the protest. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c15g7e5451zo

It's been supported by ROSA, who say they are a feminist group :(