[galangalalgol]

Doctors intervene to operate on minors all the time. Their guardian and doctors can decide to do essentially anything. If the doctor and guardian feel that the blockers, while harmful, are outweighed by the risk of self harm even with therapy and other medication, then let the doctor do the doctoring, not the politicians. There are almost twice as many intersex people who literally have at least partial sets of both reproductive organs as there are people who identify as trans. Doctors have to make hard calls without knowing the future on a regular basis. They can handle this too.

[lelanthran]

> Doctors intervene to operate on minors all the time.

On objective metrics, certainly. Never on subjective metrics.

Kid got a broken leg? Sure, doctors can intervene, often without even parental involvement (Emergencies, for example).

Kid feels like they have a broken leg? The doctor that cuts up that kid without doing any scans and working simply off the kid's self-reported feelings is going to be out of practice very very quickly.

Hell, doctors won't even prescribe antibiotics based off a kid's self-reported feelings; they'll confirm with a number of objective metrics (presence/absence of mucous in mouth/lungs, body temperature, pulse, etc).

So, no, we don't allow doctors to perform any procedures on children with only self-reported feelings as "evidence"[1].

[1] With the exception being male genital mutilation at birth, which is something I've always been vocally against.

[galangalalgol]

I should not have said operate, you are correct. The only other incidence I could find is appendectomy, because there is a clock ticking, they sometimes operate without scans. Though sometimes tonsillectomy onvoarental reports of snoring. When I was writing I was thinking about antidepressants or stimulants for adhd which are generally given based on subjective self reported evidence. They also have permanent side effects and I think we probably over proscribe them. But not giving them can lead to self harm or learning deficits which are also permanent. This seems in the same category. I'm not sure how to correctly weigh those risks, glad I'm not a pediatrician. Also about 0.02% of babies have surgery based on subjective criteria about which biological gender they are physically closest to. That is rare enough that most of us won't know such a person, and private enough that most pf us wouldn't know if we did. Statistically only about 54k in the US. But as many as 1.7% or 5M with objective intersex characteristics. Enough most of us probably know someone who is not unambiguously male or female from a biological perspective, whether we know it or not.