Don't get too excited about the subject line of this email: "Tory Government to Ban Sex Reassignment Surgery for Minors".  The story is 100% true but it is, sadly, not the Ontario Tory government of Doug Ford that is making this move. It is the Tory government of the United Kingdom's Boris Johnson". Even so, this is fantastic news.

In the past few months we have emailed you about an unprecedented legal challenge against the United Kingdom’s Tavistock gender clinic for children from a former transgender patient saying the clinic is putting children on a "torturous”, “permanent” and “unnecessary path..." by enabling them to access surgery to change their gender.

Now the British Equalities Minister, Liz Truss, has told the Women and Equalities Select Committee she will be proposing changes to the Gender Recognition Act this summer to prevent people under 18 from “from making those irreversible decisions” about gender reassignment surgery.

In a recent article that reveals this news, the Daily Telegraph notes, “This comes two years after former women and equalities minister, Penny Mordaunt, launched a public consultation into how trans people change their legal gender on their birth certificates.”

Minister Truss told the Committee: “I believe strongly that adults should have the freedom to lead their lives as they see fit, but I think it’s very important that while people are still developing their decision-making capabilities that we protect them from making those irreversible decisions.”

Wow! This is big news, especially coming from this UK government led by PM Boris Johnson. Though he leads a “Conservative Party” government, Johnson is a well known social liberal and historically committed to LGBT causes.

This is a surprising and notable–and welcome!– turn of events. 

It should reassure us here in Canada that the tide can be turned on this issue.  We just need more people speaking up, like the brave whistle-blowers in the Tavistock legal challenge did.  We also need politicians who are open to the truth and willing to act in the public interest.  

Because the Daily Telegraph article is behind a paywall, we are making it accessible by clicking here.

Will you please help Parents as First Educators out in our battle to get vital information into the community in Ontario so that our government officials can be similarly informed? 

Please support PAFE with a donation by clicking here.

Best regards,

Teresa Pierre, Ph.D.

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