Australian Family Court Allows Cross Sex Hormones for Teen

[NotYourCisterinAus]

https://archive.is/y7tNF

Excuse me while I bang my head against the wall in frustration.

I just came on MN to post this! Very frustrating.

Ash is 16 years old. This would normally thought to be old enough to make medical decisions.

''During the hearing, the court was told Ash and his 10-year-old sister, known as Lee, made a pact that Lee would harvest her eggs to ensure Ash could have children if the transition affected his fertility in the long term.''

OK so this more than anything to me demonstrates that the 16 yr old is not fit to make own decisions about their health if they are prepared to make a pact with their TEN year old sister to harvest her eggs to utilise. Who would put such a question to a little child, the 10 year old cannot possibly comprehend the rigours of egg harvesting let alone the ethics. Foul.

Justice Tree relied heavily on the evidence of a gender clinician who was a witness for the Independent Children’s Lawyer, known to the court as Dr O.
Dr O favoured the World Professional Association for Transgender Health guidelines as “by far the best available guidance at this time, and … informed by decades of expert clinician experience”.
Justice Tree agreed, giving the guidelines – as well as the Australian Standards of Care and Treatment Guidelines and state government policy – “great weight, because they are models of care arrived at by consensus of the relevant professional bodies”.
He said the Cass Review, a landmark probe that recommended “extreme caution” be taken when prescribing hormones to children, was undertaken “in a vexed environment”.
“I do not overlook that there may have been an overt political imperative behind the Cass Review – which was, after all, initiated by the UK executive government,” he said.
“Particularly the then UK prime minister is on record of having publicly said on 5 October 2023 – whilst the Cass Review was being finalised: ‘And we shouldn’t be bullied into believing that people can be any sex they want to be. They can’t. A man is a man and a woman is a woman’.”

We do live in a post-truth world. Poor Ash.

Horrific.

Blimey, the judge is a heavily biased ideologue, by the sound of things. At the very least, saying that WPATH has the best care model and that the Cass report should be dismissed as politically motivated shows ignorance of the facts.

OMG it's an upside down world when the Cass Review is assumed to be politicised and WPATH is scientific. That poor child.

Imagine allowing that kind of responsibility on a TEN year old little girl to continue. That HER eggs can be harvested if her sibling’s fertility is affected by treatment.

The flippant comments made by the judge should not go unchallenged. The idea that even if he was unable to conceive, there is always the prospect of adoption and surrogacy. Underestimating the impact of possible future regret and grief at not being able to conceive. And no thought to possible harms to the surrogate and baby.

And in this case "the surrogate" might be Ash's sister. Who agreed to this at 10 years old and her offer has now been mentioned by the judge in court and reported in public as something positive for her sibling. The judge doesn't seem to have considered the effects of all this on her and goodness knows what kind of pressure it all puts on her future as a woman.

This.

And flippantly acknowledging that there are likely to be many children who regret their decisions in the future adds to how sad this is.

As does:

"Justice Tree in his judgment said the parent who opposed treatment “unduly emphasised” the risks in order to further their case"

It must be heartbreaking for that parent to have flagged the risks and this is the conclusion from the court. How can high risks of infertility, cardiac failure, womb atrophy/cancer, incontinence and more be batted off in this way?

😢

Despite the fact you need to be 18 to vote, drink, smoke, have a tattoo or buy a can of spray paint. More importantly you need to be 18 to have your genitally pierced. How does that square with allowing CSH?

https://yac.net.au/legal-info/when-can-i/

The judge appears to expect Ash's sister to follow through, as an adult, with a pact she made as a ten-year old. A ten-year cannot know the ramifications of what she promised, and she'd be entirely within her rights to say "no" once she grows up.

I don't know if the judge expects her to follow through or not but what a mess. Imagine if the 10yo sib of a teen with a severe disability said "yes of course you can live with me when we grow up" a court would handle it very differently.

Ah, apologies. I just referred back to the article. The judge was told that Ash had made a pact with the 10-year old sister. It still puzzles me that any adult, be they judge, lawyer or witness, would consider it had any relevance to the question of whether a 16-year old should be allowed to sterilize themselves.

Decisions like being sterilised? I don't think so.

The judge is clearly a zealot. He should have recused himself from this case because of his religious beliefs.

The other thing that got me, was how cavalierly the judge dismissed the health effects of testosterone on Ash. When I was 16 I took a healthy, functioning body for granted. Now I'm nearly 60, I can see how precious it was.

Shocking in so many ways. The cavalier attitude hormone therapy is one thing, but the fact that a chat between two children about egg sharing was taken seriously enough to reference is so shocking that it dwarfs the testosterone issue.
Then there's the fact that the judge suggests surrogacy as the solution if any fertility issues arise in the future.
Wow.

Trained, qualified medics make medical decisions.

Could hardly believe what I was reading there. His 10 year sister, FFS! Don't know who is the most deluded; Ash, or the judge.

It’s hard to think about the fallout for the two siblings when the younger sister realises the enormity of egg donation. There could be intense emotional manipulation to go through with it or a bust up if she rightly says no. No one’s decision should be leveraged on risks to another person.

I am going to get flamed for this but the judge is not a medical expert and has to consider and balance three different medical views The Cass Review, the WPATH guidance and the Australian Standards of Care and Treatment Guidelines.

His reasoning on which to follow is not unreasonable given he is in Australia not the UK. A judge in the UK would likely give more weight to Cass than the Australian guidance. It’s not surprising an Australian judge would do the opposite. WPATH (wrongly) have a lot of credibility e.g. the NHS uses the guidance.

The facts are that Cass is political. It was a response by the government of the day to a toxic debate. The fact that Baroness Cass is a woman of integrity and highly experienced means she conducted a medical/data driven independent review does not change that. There are GC people who feel the review was not neutral so both sides of the debate are not 100% happy - in my view usually a good sign.

He is clearly aware there will be detransitioners and these will result in court cases.

Ash’s pact with their 10 year old sister shows an understanding that Ash may be left sterile, may want children and may require an egg donor to become pregnant. No one expects a 10 year old to be held to this pact. It’s more it illustrates Ash’s comprehension of the negative aspects of PB I.e. that there are downsides.

The judge acknowledges Ash maybe left sterilised etc. but at 16 Ash has demonstrated they understand this and there is a point where a judge has to take onboard a child/young persons wishes. I hate the idea that surrogacy is seen as one of the judges solutions to this.

Essentially this judge is doing what is proposed in the UK as part of a trial. The Cass Clinical trials means some children will be given PB and this will be based on their individual cases.

I acknowledge my response is based on the article and not hearing all the evidence.

Finally, I don’t think anyone should be given PB but can see why in this case a 16 year old has been granted the right to take them.

No one’s decision should be leveraged on risks to another person.

Well said @BettyFilous

Ash’s pact with their 10 year old sister shows an understanding that Ash may be left sterile, may want children and may require an egg donor to become pregnant. No one expects a 10 year old to be held to this pact. It’s more it illustrates Ash’s comprehension of the negative aspects of PB I.e. that there are downsides.

Point taken about the pact showing some understanding that the treatment may result in sterility. However, the fantasy of a pregnancy with a donated egg means Ash has not understood the risks of vaginal atrophy and hysterectomy with cross-sex testosterone, so belies a superficial understanding of the long term risks. That’s before you even unpick the total inappropriateness of that conversation with their 10 year old sibling. Madness.

The facts are that Cass is political.
Commissioning a report is a political decision.

The contents of the report is not. It's evidence-based. Prepared by a highly qualified medical team. Led by Cass who is scrupulously neutral, even if this results in her using more TRA-influenced language than I'd personally like to see in a medical report. They didn't commission someone working in the Tavistock who might be biased one way, they didn't commission a gender critical activist doctor who might be biased the other way, they commissioned a highly respected and neutral paediatrician.

People calling Cass biased are trying to discredit the report because they don't like what it says. That's a political act too. Not the report itself.