The Alberta government has invoked the Charter’s notwithstanding clause to prevent court challenges to a trio of laws impacting transgender youth and adults.
The clause is part of a bill now before the house, and Premier Danielle Smith says the move is necessary to protect children’s health and well-being.
She says their health could be jeopardized if challenges to the laws are tied up in court for a long time.
The notwithstanding clause allows governments to override Charter rights if deemed necessary as a way to balance the authority of both politicians and the courts.
The clause relates to laws that put restrictions on student pronoun changes at school, on girls’ and women’s sports, and on medical therapies for young people looking to transition.
Two of those bills are facing court challenges on the grounds they are harmful and unconstitutional.
Its a very tough call, because there is a window where you want to slow or halt puberty by your current hormones to transition, and unfortunately its the same time as developing the brain.
There are legit people who are just born and know there brain doesn’t match their assigned gender.
You will have those that may have a disphoria disorder, where the brain tricks them, like people who have alien hand syndrome. And so do you try to treat that via mental health, or do you give them relief by having a path to changing.
There will be just some kids who don’t know their belonging in the world, and feel the gender change is the answer. (We were all confused teens at some point.) These kids I feel really bad for because they may think the transition is going to solve how they feel inside, but it might not, or they might grow out of those feelings.
But back to the problem, if you ask them to wait and see if they grow out of it, you’ve lost valuable hormone time, and had them suffer unnecessarily if their outlook didn’t change.