Court Rules Autistic Anorexic Teenager Cannot Be Given Cross-Sex Hormones

In a potential legal landmark, a judge has ruled that doctors who administer cross sex-hormones to under-18s with private prescriptions from gender clinics could be in breach of the law if they have not obtained permission from a court. Judge Sir Andrew McFarlane was presiding over the case of an anorexic, autistic 16-year-old girl with complex mental health problems who was prescribed both puberty blockers and a “dangerously high dose” of testosterone injections when she was just 15, following a one hour consultation with a private gender clinic based in Singapore. The child’s mother had allowed the testosterone to be injected by an NHS GP who accepted the private prescription, but her father did not agree and argued that his daughter lacked the mental capacity to consent to such life-altering treatment and took legal action under the Children’s Act of 1989....