Over the weekend of 20 October 2023, the legal press reported how a mother is battling her former husband in the High Court in England over whether their teenage child should have medical treatment to change gender.
The child’s mother wants the 15-year-old to only be treated by the NHS because it takes a ‘cautious approach’ and rarely now prescribes powerful puberty-blocker drugs to youngsters amid concern about the long-term health effects. But the father wants his child to be allowed to go to a private clinic where young patients are still routinely given the controversial drugs, which are used to stop the onset of physical changes into adulthood.
The mother won the first stage of the legal case after a judge ruled that her child must not be treated outside of the NHS until turning 16. However, this ruling only extends to the child’s sixteenth birthday when the case will have to return to court if the mother wants the treatment to be delayed further.
The mother wants the court order to be extended so that the child would have to wait until turning 18 to decide on starting medical treatment to change gender.
The case, which will be heard in the Family Division of the High Court, is covered by extremely strict restrictions preventing the media from reporting any details that may lead to the identification of the child or parents.
The mother is attempting to raise £20,000 in online donations to pay for her legal fees to fight her case.
She explains that she wants her child to remain under the NHS because it is taking a more ‘cautious approach’ to treating children who are confused about their gender.
New guidelines introduced in June mean NHS gender clinics for young people aged 17 and under will focus on psychological therapies rather than puberty blockers, which can only be prescribed to under-16s as part of clinical research.
The guidance followed an overhaul of NHS child gender services in England, with regional centres now set to replace the much-criticised Tavistock clinic (which was forced to close) after a damning NHS review by Dr Hilary Cass said the clinic was ‘not safe’.
Ms A said young patients are getting around the new NHS safeguards by going to private clinics, where they can access ‘life-changing and potentially irreversible’ treatments such as puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones.
The prescription of puberty blockers to young people is controversial due to the lack of clinical knowledge about the medication’s long-term effect on children’s brain and bone development.
Cross-sex hormones, which can cause infertility, trigger the physical process of transitioning by increasing hair growth and muscle mass in females or breast development in males.
Analysis
This sort of court intervention is not new. At Blanchards Law, we frequently assist parents in court who cannot agree on medical treatment for their child. This case has wider implications as the long-term outcomes of puberty blockers and other invasive treatment is not known, due to their relative novelty. The court has already grappled with the Keira Bell case, where a young woman was given puberty blockers at 16, and transitioned to being a male, followed by a double mastectomy. She realised a few years later that she had been seriously mentally ill when initially seeking treatment, which had not been assessed properly by the Tavistock Clinic. She sued the Clinic and eventually won, and this led directly to its closure.
If you have any concerns about your child’s medication, or even lack of it, please contact us. We have also represented parents who wanted certain medication prescribed as being in their best interests, and succeeded.
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