Children make medical decisions all the time
Dr Helen Webberley on LBC: trans healthcare, with Tom Swarbrick, LBC
Children are too young to make medical decisions, and that is especially true when it comes to anything involving gender. Under a certain age, the thinking goes, they simply cannot understand what they are consenting to.
Children make medical decisions all the time, and we trust them to do it. A child with diabetes decides whether to take their insulin. A child with cancer is part of the conversation about their treatment. We do not tell a twelve-year-old they are too young to have a say in their own appendix. The argument that gender care is different is not a medical argument: it is a political one dressed up as concern for children. The standard we apply everywhere else in medicine is whether the child understands what is being proposed and what it means for them. That standard exists, it works, and there is no good reason to abandon it the moment the subject is gender.
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