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Have had a piece about Bell v Tavistock in my head for a week but no time to write it
TL;DR version: it's flawed in the same way Re L (which it cites) was flawed - using Gillick/medical capacity of under 18s as a basis for a finding which is not really about *medical* capacity at all; plus relying on unevidenced assumption that PBs themselves can trans children
Re L concerned a 14yo Jehovah's Witness who sought to refuse a blood transfusion. The Court ruled she lacked Gillick competence to do so.
Now the question of whether a 14yo is mature enough to make that decision is fraught and scary. You can understand the court's hesitance, but
Now the question of whether a 14yo is mature enough to make that decision is fraught and scary. You can understand the court's hesitance, but
... ultimately it wasn't a question of her ability to understand the medical treatment that was proposed. It was a question of whether it was appropriate to let a child "choose" death based on the religion her parents had taught her.
Understandable. But not Gillick.
Understandable. But not Gillick.
In Bell v Tavistock, I think the court is similarly misapplying a medical capacity test to what is actually a question of whether an under 18yo can really know that they're trans. There's no question that that's a legitimate concern, just as the court's concern in Re L was valid.
But for L, there was an inevitability to the consequences of her medical decision. There's no real analogy to puberty blockers - UNLESS you accept that taking PBs can, in and of itself, make you trans. Which the BvT court appeared to do. Paragraph 137 is key here
So I think what the court is really saying is not that kids can't understand the medical treatment - the Gillick test - but that they can't understand their own gender identity, so can't consent to treatment which might alter their gender identity.
The problem is that the court's understanding of that treatment is inherently flawed. Perhaps we should be questioning the judges' Gillick competence.
One last thing. While judges presumably reached their decision in good faith, some of the arguments they heard were not made in good faith. We KNOW this from things said in other fora. Commentators need to bear this in mind, and not just uncritically accept the court's analysis.
