Professor: Most Parents Should 'Lose Veto Power' Over Their Minor Children's Gender Transition

If you have a child, to what degree is he or she yours?

It’s an increasingly relevant question, both culturally and legally.

And, it seems, it’s one whose answer is on the move.

Apropos of that, a professor at Arizona State University’s got thoughts.

In response to a paper by Melbourne Law School researcher Lauren Notini, Professor Maura Priest has penned an article for the Journal of Medical Ethics.

At issue: the ethics of transgenderism and its employment of drugs.

In Lauren’s piece, she argued that the use of puberty-suppressing pharmaceuticals can “ethically be offered to non-binary adults in principle.”

Because:

[Ongoing puberty suppression] can promote patient well-being and is therefore consistent with the proper goals of medicine.

As noted by Campus Reform, Maura’s good with that.

However, in her view, LGBT “testimony” trumps any potential medical opinions, regardless of which way they lean.

If the medical community is to take LGBT testimony seriously (as they should), then it is no longer the job of physicians to do their own weighing of the costs and benefits of transition-related care.

“Assuming the patient is informed and competent,” Maura writes, “then only the patient can make this assessment.”

[O]nly the patient has access to the true weight of transition-related benefits.

And if only “patients” can make that decision, what role should parents play if their children disagree with their chromosomes?

Per Maura, a very limited one.

Indeed, also trumped: mom and dad.

Maura’s perspective reflects a profound evolution in the concept of parental rights — and children’s.

And a growing number of kids are claiming an alternate identity.

Hence, surely a great deal of turmoil awaits.

Sign of the times: In March, a Canadian man was arrested for misgendering his 14-year-old child by calling her by her sex.

This could never happen, said those who called my stance against Bill C16 alarmist. I read the law and saw that it was, to the contrary, inevitable https://t.co/zi8vB5x4x0

— Dr Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) March 18, 2021

Different country, but not that different of a disposition.

The very definition of parenting, it appears, is changing.

Schools are assuming a motherly/fatherly place in ways never before seen.

The pandemic brought many things to light, including parents being viewed by educators as “outsiders”:

This is something I worry about a lot. My 9th graders read and respond to a news article in each class and the discussions we have are really important. But many students will not participate when virtual because they fear outsiders listening and using their words against them

— Sarah Mulhern Gross (@thereadingzone) August 8, 2020

And Joe Biden wants kids to stay in school:

The fact is 12 years of education is no longer enough to compete in the 21st Century.

That’s why my Build Back Better Agenda will guarantee four additional years of public education for every person in America – two years of pre-school and two years of free community college.

— President Biden (@POTUS) July 7, 2021

A diminishing view of parental power’s spreading outward from the classroom.

Consider a recent video featuring Vice President of Training at the Virginia state PTA and Vice President of Communications for the Fairfax County PTA Michelle Leete’s address of parents who are (in part)…

anti-equity

anti-racial reckoning

anti-diversity

anti-platform

anti-change agent

anti-environment

anti-admissions policy change

anti-inclusion

anti-social justice

anti-LGBTQ+

Her expressed position:

“Let them die.”

Given that, one particular category she named was especially perplexing:

anti-live-and-let live people

“Let them die,” says @FairfaxNAACP leader Michelle Leete at protest before @fcpsnews board. Folks against critical race theory are here, with protestors including Leete opposing them. It’ll be 🧨 tonight. Watch at https://t.co/KuScNenTVQ pic.twitter.com/Csb5faEYKG

— Asra Q. Nomani (@AsraNomani) July 15, 2021

Back to Maura’s essay, the professor profiles a hypothetical case of “Chicago,” the “nonbinary patient.”

Undergoing puberty suppression has a 90% chance of osteoporosis, she points out.

Nonetheless, “medical experts have dismissed, downplayed and doubted, LGBT testimony, all of which manifests blatant disrespect” and constitutes “prioritizing [sic] physical over psychological health.”

Such, according to Maura, is “ethically dubious.”

So Chicago’s puberty should get shut down.

And we’ve got to get away from hetero hangups:

Heteronormativity has long fueled LGBT medical mistreatment. To avoid going back down that path, medicine must leave room for diverse and atypical health prioritizations.

What, then, will guide whether kids are given drugs?

One thing’s for sure, if Maura gets her way: It won’t be parents.

Their veto is finito: