Comment by engineer_22 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by engineer_22 | Hacker News Reader

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>Even for adults, it doesn't happen without a great deal of psychological analysis, lived experience, multiple concurring psychological reviews, and informed consent.

To play the devil's advocate: A minor child cannot provide consent, and that's kind of the problem.

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Edit: To give the idea a little more flesh:

It's the duty of the of the State to represent the well-being of a child, if the children's parents are unable or unwilling to do so.

Let's be hypothetical here and imagine a place where a majority of the People of a State believe "gender affirming care" is not in a child's best interest, then you could have a situation where the State is compelled to do what was done in Texas.

Are the majority of people in Texas of the belief that "gender affirming care" is not in a child's best interest? I don't know, but it seems plausible.

Is "gender affirming care", in truth, the best thing for a child? I don't know. I don't know how to even start to approach that question in an acceptable way.

That's a good devil's advocate, but it's worth pointing out minor children consent (with parental consent, too) to surgeries all the time. Whether that's cancer treatments, surgeries to repair bone fractures, plastic surgeries, etc.

I believe bottom surgeries are all but unheard of for under 18, but there were 203 top surgeries performed on minors in 2021 (safe to assume vast majority of these were either 16 or 17). In comparison, more than 8,000 minors had breast augmentation in 2019. 4,700 girls had breast reduction surgery in 2010 (apologies, these were the newest numbers I could find, clearly after more than a decade it's reasonable to believe there are more reductions than implants). In 2015, there were 7,021 breast reductions for boys.

It seems to me like if the genuine concern was over minors making decisions about their body that aren't reversible, we would be seeing equal and proportional outrage for these other surgeries, right?

Edit for your edit :) Gender affirming care appears to be what's best for kids according to the majority of research and the major medical associations in the US. The experts certainly could be wrong, but generally speaking I prefer having doctors treating me in a hospital and pilots flying my planes.

Good sport. :)

>That's a good devil's advocate, but it's worth pointing out minor children consent (with parental consent, too) to surgeries all the time. Whether that's cancer treatments, surgeries to repair bone fractures, plastic surgeries, etc.

Minor children CANNOT CONSENT. Bottom Line. Minor children cannot consent because they are not given the faculty of consent in common law. A parent's consent is ALWAYS required, and the parent is culpable for that decision.

>Gender affirming care appears to be what's best for kids according to the majority of research and the major medical associations in the US. The experts certainly could be wrong, but generally speaking I prefer having doctors treating me in a hospital and pilots flying my planes.

Our society is not technocratic. "Right and wrong" are decided by the People. Medical experts are not the arbiters of social acceptability or law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emancipation_of_minors legally it's not quite that simple

Had to be "that guy"

:)

There's a pdf linked below that includes the laws for consent of minors to medical treatment.

What do you achieve by making that argument? I was literally referring to adults and bottom surgery, because *bottom surgery isn't being performed on children*.

The problem is that you missed the point entirely.

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