Legislation preventing access to puberty blocking drugs for trans children is based on evidence suggesting such treatments may be harmful, a lawyer for the province said Tuesday.
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Lawyer David Madsen said Justice Allison Kuntz should reject an application by counsel for five prepubescent gender-diverse kids to issue an injunction blocking the province from proclaiming the legislation into law.
Madsen defended the provincial government’s decision to pass a bill preventing doctors from prescribing drugs related to puberty suppression and hormone replacement therapy for the purpose of treating gender dysphoria or gender incongruence (GDI) in minors.
“Alberta . . . does not doubt the value of providing care to children facing GDI, but that care must be safe and evidence based,” Madsen told the Calgary Court of King’s Bench judge.
“That is what the legislation is about. Protecting the safety and long-term choice of children and youth from a risky and experimental medical intervention, for which there is little evidence of benefit and evidence of significant harm in some cases.”
Lawyers for the five unnamed trans children, who range in age from six to 12, argued on Monday that the legislation denying access to the drugs will cause irreparable harm in their clients.
They said the psychological harm of being forced to go through puberty in a gender other than the one they identify with could lead to suicidal ideation and other mental-health issues.
But Madsen argued the legislation is designed to ensure developing minds don’t make life-altering decisions they could later regret.
He noted in introducing the law, Premier Danielle Smith referred to Kellie-Lynn Pirie, a woman born female who transitioned to male as an adult, only to later regret her decision and detransition back to female.
“It didn’t fix the things that she thought it would,” Madsen said, quoting Smith’s comments in Hansard.
“Her comment was ‘boy, if I didn’t know as an adult that this was the right path for me, how’s a young child supposed to know that that’s the right path for them?’ ”
Madsen said that showed even gender-diverse adults have difficulty deciding what is right for them.
“If an adult can’t even figure it out, we’ve got to be extra careful about children trying to figure it out,” he said.
Madsen went on to quote Smith further: “We owe it to every child and youth who identifies as transgender and who experiences gender dysphoria to have open and honest and rational conversations.”
The lawyers for the children, as well as advocacy groups Egale Canada and Skipping Stone Scholarship Foundation, Kara Smyth, LJ Stanic and Adam Goldenberg, are seeking an injunction preventing enforcement of the legislation until they can argue it violates their clients’ Charter rights.
Lawyer Karen Salmon, who also argued for the province, said the injunction application is premature since the legislation has not yet been proclaimed into law.
“The act is not yet in force,” Salmon said.
Kuntz reserved her decision and will hand down her ruling at a later date.