Discussing Fertility w⧸ Gender Dysphoric Kids Like 'Talking to a Blank Wall' ｜ Mia Hughes
Episode Stats
Words per minute
117.595436
Summary
In this episode, Dr. Kelly reflects on her own journey to becoming a mother, and why we should never offer vasectomies or tubal ligation to adolescents, no matter how strongly they may insist that they will never want to have children.
Transcript
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In the leaked WPATH files, internal communications from the World
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Professional Association for Transgender Health, that Michael Schellenberger and
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I released last year, a leading Canadian pediatric endocrinologist admitted
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that discussing fertility preservation with a 14-year-old is like, and I quote,
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talking to a blank wall. He also admitted that he sees significant regret about
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fertility loss in his patients when they reach adulthood. Now I know this to be
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true because I, at 14, like so many other women, was that blank wall. All the way
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into my late 20s, I was adamant that I would never want children, and then at
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30, it was as if someone flipped a switch inside me, and I needed to have a baby
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And today, at 47, I'm the proud mother of three children.
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And they've brought more joy into my life than my teenage self ever could have
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imagined. This is a completely normal life trajectory. It's the reason we would
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never offer vasectomies or tubal ligation to adolescents, no matter how
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strenuously they may insist that they will never want to be parents. Everything we
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know about adolescent development tells us that this is a life stage defined by
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experimentation and change. It's a period of identity exploration, where young people
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try on different selves, when beliefs are held with passionate conviction one day only
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to be discarded the next. And because we know that adolescents don't have fixed, stable identities,
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we should also know that permanent irreversible medical interventions that
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imprint adolescent identities onto the body could never be appropriate or ethical.