Women Speak Tasmania has welcomed the national inquiry announced last Friday by Greg Hunt, Federal Minister for Health, into the ethics of medical and surgical interventions offered to children and adolescents presenting at gender clinics and services.
Spokesperson Bronwyn Williams said, ‘Women Speak Tasmania fully endorses the submissions made to the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP) and Minister Hunt by Tasmanian sociologist, Dr Geoff Holloway, and psychologist, Dr Dianna Kenny’.
‘We are concerned with the medical ethics of providing pre- and post- pubescent children with powerful puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. These interventions are being provided by clinicians whose primary focus is “affirmation” of the child’s or adolescent’s chosen gender’.
‘Anecdotally, we have heard of cases where medical intervention was offered after minimal consultation with the child, or their parents or carers’.
‘We consider that the best interests of the child are often being ignored in these situations’.
‘Gender affirming interventions, including surgery in some cases, are taking place without regard to the possible long-term adverse physical or psychological effects, and in the absence of any reliable scientific research into those effects’.
‘It is vital that the Terms of Reference for the inquiry are broad and include concerns raised by parents and carers, and by those who have abandoned ‘gender’ transition and now live as their birth sex’.
‘We believe the inquiry should also seek input from international experts in the fields of psychology, paediatrics and endocrinology, many of whom have expressed doubts about the ‘gender affirmation’ model of care for children and adolescents presenting at gender services’, said Bronwyn Williams.
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