LGBTQ2 advocate organizations say they’re working as quickly as possible to ask a court to stop the Alberta government from bringing into force a transgender law they say will cause immediate harm.
The Alberta government’s law will ban doctors from providing gender-affirming treatment such as puberty blockers and hormone therapy for those under 16.
Bennett Jensen, legal director at Egale Canada, said the groups, which also include Skipping Stone and five Alberta families, will call for an injunction to protect young people’s access to health care while the courts decide whether the law is constitutional.
“This is harmful immediately, and there’s enough reason to doubt the constitutionality of this for the judge to preserve the status quo while they consider the broader arguments,” Jensen told The Canadian Press on Monday.
In documents filed with the Court of King’s Bench on Monday, they cite five transgender youth who will be directly affected.
One applicant, kept anonymous in the legal filing, is 10 years old, transgender and intersex. She was assigned male at birth but was born with a chromosome abnormality.
Under the law, she will be prevented from accessing puberty blockers or gender-affirming hormones for six years, until she is 16.
Another applicant described in the filing is 11 years old, was assigned male at birth, but uses the pronouns she and her. She too will be prevented from accessing puberty blockers or gender-affirming hormones until she is 16 years old.
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The filing says that if puberty blockers are delayed, irreversible physical development will occur. None of the individual applicants will be able to access gender-affirming “top surgery” until they are 18 years old.
The surgical ban went into effect as soon as the bill received royal assent Thursday, but other prohibitions are expected to come into force in the coming months.
The LGBTQ2 groups argue changes to health law violate gender-diverse…
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