The Scottish Govt is ignoring the harm its gender self-ID plan will do to kids

In the UK, Scotland is at the forefront of the push to make changing legal sex easier. This has come at a cost to the careers of those willing to speak out against it, and the young people whose health and futures are being trampled upon.

The Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill proposes to make it much easier to change legal sex by removing the need for medical evidence and reducing the two-year waiting period to three months. It even extends ‘sex swaps’ to 16-year-olds. The Scottish Parliament recently voted it through its first stage at Holyrood.

This was despite widespread concern for the impact on children from the inevitable push of transgender ideology in schools and the real fear that if people are permitted to self-declare their gender without a medical diagnosis, predatory men will exploit that to gain access to all-female facilities to intimidate, harass or even attack women and girls.

These concerns have been ignored by the SNP, which ordered its MSPs to vote in favour of the Bill. And yet there were some who bravely defied their parties. The most high-profile of these was Ash Regan, the Minister for Community Safety, who resigned before the debate, saying “my conscience will not allow me to vote with the government”.

She later told the media: “We know that in many areas of life women are discriminated against, and so rightly they have legal protections in place, and I was not convinced that those legal protections could continue to be upheld. And my conscience would not allow me to vote for a Bill where I could not be 100 per cent certain that women and girls would not be in danger.” 

Sandyford

But the casualties of gender ideology go far beyond the politicians.

Many young people are suffering deeply because they are being encouraged to think of themselves as transgender, affirmed in their false beliefs, and funnelled down a path to lifelong medical interventions.

This week, it came to light that children as young as nine have been given puberty-blocking drugs at the NHS’s Sandyford gender clinic in Glasgow. In fact, between 2011 and 2019 nearly 100 youngsters, mainly girls, aged between nine and 17 were put on the sex-swap conveyor belt. Nearly two-thirds had autism or some form of mental health condition. Nearly all who start down this path go on to take cross-sex hormones and even have surgery. That is contrasted sharply with evidence that up to 90 per cent of those who do not take such drugs eventually abandon their desire to change sex once they go through puberty naturally.

This tragic news came only a few days after an audio recording revealed one of the clinic’s senior consultants admitting its methods are not backed by “robust evidence”, with mental assessments based almost entirely on self-diagnosis.

She said: “It’s not a forensic assessment where you’re looking at social work and school and all of those things. You’re basically just going on what they tell you.”

How can doctors consider this ethical? When you are considering putting a child on a life-altering course of drugs and potentially even multiple surgeries, surely it is your responsibility to diligently investigate the individual’s mental health issues as thoroughly as possible? According to the Sandyford doctor, no. Even if patients later change their mind, doctors can square it with their conscience so long as the information was “correct at the time of writing”.

Rightly, concerns have been raised at the Sandyford’s approach and the NHS has been tasked with drawing up safeguards. But these won’t be in place before the end of 2023, long after the Government’s reckless Bill is expected to pass, a delay branded by some as “gross medical negligence”.

An interim report from the high-profile Cass Review of clinical practice in England outlined serious failings at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust’s Gender Identity Development Service. In light of the report, the London service is to be closed by March next year, and campaigners understandably see no reason why the Glasgow clinic shouldn’t close too, given its seemingly identical treatment pathway.

Warnings falling on deaf ears

Even amid growing alarm over what has been going on at Sandyford, the SNP/Green Coalition is desperately trying to make it even easier for people to change their legal sex, even lowering the age a person can apply for a Gender Recognition Certificate from 18 to 16.

It does not appear to matter to them how many parents raise concerns for the impact on their vulnerable children, or how many detransitioners, like Sinéad Watson, tell their stories of how transitioning did not solve their problems but compounded them by putting them through irreversible surgery.

Nor does it seem to matter how many women speak out of the dangers posed to them if men are allowed unfettered access to private, female-only facilities such as changing rooms and domestic abuse shelters.

The alarm bells are ringing, the warning signs everywhere. But the Scottish Government appears intent on neither hearing nor seeing them.