Guest post: An issue of bodily integrity
Originally a comment by tigger_the_wing on Questions of bodily autonomy.
Medicalisation of children, and the surgical removal of healthy body parts which are necessary for a full and healthy adult life, aren’t an issue of ‘bodily autonomy’; they’re an issue of bodily integrity. Adults should be protecting children from harmful physical interventions which are wholly unnecessary, and equally should be protecting them from an ideology which is telling them that they need those interventions in order to ever be happy again.
We allow children a say in medical and surgical interventions according to age and competence. My son had no say in the procedure to give him some hearing at the age of four months, so I had to weigh up the probability of being deaf having a massive negative effect on his acquisition of language and his safety, versus the slight risk of the procedure itself, and make the decision for him. Using medicines and surgery on a child when to do nothing is harmful, but the outcome of the interventions is beneficial, is quite different to removing their ability to mature alongside their peer group, or to grow into adulthood with necessary body parts intact; it is quite different to turning them into lifelong medical patients because of iatrogenic health issues.
When it comes to girls and abortion, it has been proved time and again that a timely termination of pregnancy is far, far safer than allowing it to go to term. That truly is an issue of bodily autonomy, and girls are capable of having a say in the decision, provided that they have had proper, fact-based, counselling. Proper, fact-based, counselling is exactly what children are not being given when pushed onto the ‘trans’ track.
And that IMHO is because those giving the dodgy ‘counselling’ all too often have their issues in there as well, and so favour one outcome over any others. (No prizes for guessing which.)
Re #1, I don’t think I’d agree the issue is about favoring an outcome per se, as much as it is about having the facts terribly wrong. Wanting the patient to understand he or she cannot actually change sex, that there’s nothing wrong with being the sex they are, and that any transition involves pretending, is still favoring one outcome over others.
If a child believes he or she can actually become a person of the other sex, then he or she lacks the competence to consent to a procedure which would alter his or her body in order to present the appearance of being the opposite sex.
When I was eighteen, I needed my wisdom teeth removed. My parents had to sign, because the doctor couldn’t do it until I was twenty-one on my signature.
Now I could have a double mastectomy without parental permission? Could I have my wisdom teeth removed? (Probably at eighteen; I doubt that’s a problem anymore.)
iknklst: the local tattoo parlor requires parental consent under 18. I guess major invasive surgery without even telling the parents is ok?????