Alberta has acted responsibly, restricting unproven and irreversible treatments for minors. It's the CMA that must reckon with its conscience

You can save this article by registering for free here. Or sign-in if you have an account.

The Canadian Medical Association (CMA) has launched a legal challenge to Alberta’s recent ban on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for youth under 16 who identify as transgender. The CMA argues that Alberta’s Bill 26, enacted in December last year, violates physicians’ Charter right to freedom of conscience. This raises a pertinent question: If a doctor is compelled by conscience to subject vulnerable youth to unproven treatments despite growing evidence of harm, should governments intervene to protect patients?

Enjoy the latest local, national and international news.

Enjoy the latest local, national and international news.

Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.

Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.

It is troubling that Canada’s most prominent medical body would oppose a law grounded in precisely the kind of evidence-based caution other nations are embracing. Countries like Sweden, Finland, and England have all conducted years-long investigations into the practices in their paediatric gender clinics and, after finding that potential benefits of puberty blockers were inconclusive or that the risks outweigh the benefits, have reverted to a cautious psychotherapeutic approach to helping gender-distressed youth.

This newsletter tackles hot topics with boldness, verve and wit. (Subscriber-exclusive edition on Fridays)

By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.

A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder.

The next issue of Platformed will soon be in your inbox.

We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try again

Interested in more newsletters? Browse here.

The CMA, by contrast, calls Alberta’s move an “unprecedented government intrusion” into the doctor-patient relationship, claiming it forces doctors to choose between obeying the law and doing what they think is best for their patients. Yet it is becoming increasingly clear that, regardless of their good intentions, doctors who continue to prescribe these interventions could be inflicting lasting harm on the young people they seek to help in the form of infertility, reduced bone density, disrupted psychosocial development, and impaired sexual function.

The decision to build the case on freedom of conscience is a curious one. Conscience rights are meant to protect doctors’ right to refrain from providing treatments that violate their moral or ethical beliefs — such as in cases related to abortion or medical assistance in dying — not to grant them the right to perform interventions that lack solid evidence or violate medical........

© National Post