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Do you actually not understand the difference or did you just want to get a cheap dig in?
Do you see all medical interventions in under-18's as 'grooming'? No? Just the one you already have a prior about not liking?
If I'm wrong please tell me how. There's a huge host of reasons why they are different, but I'm only going to bother explaining them if you're not going to respond with another sarcastic one liner that is indistinguishable from an inflamed partisan spouting nonsense about 'the transgenders grooming my kids to want to be raped'.
You are correct, I perceive no difference between children "consenting" to sex or "consenting" to sterilization.
I will repeat: do you think children can consent to surgery for appendicitis? treatment via antidepressants? Antibiotics?
I actually don't! I think without a parent involved in the decisions, malicious actors could convince a child to get any surgery or take any drugs. And sometimes even then!
So no, I do not believe a child can consent to any of those things, which is why parents make those decisions for them.
Right, but these 'malicious actors' could be anyone, even the parents themselves. I don't think parents should have a special right to make these decisions for their children if their interests are not aligned with their child's. I can't remember the exact details, but there was a news story a year or two ago about a couple whose child died because they refused to get a basic medical treatment for religious reasons.
In such a case, do you think the parents have the moral right to refuse treatment for the child? (I believe in the case I'm thinking of the child was a newborn, so the question of consent was obvious).
If you answer negatively to the above (as I do) then we switch from having a discussion about what is absolutely allowed or not allowed to one in which we must judge the pros and cons of taking away agency from parents depending on what the issue is.
I largely agree with you that children can be convinced of anything depending on the right context, but here is my main contention with your points: The key difference between a groomer targeting a child and a doctor performing a surgery is their interests; the latter is doing so based on what they believe to be in the best interests of the child based on medical/scientific literature, the former is doing so for personal reasons.
Malicious actors can convince children of things, but that does not mean any expert telling any child about a solution to their medical issues is grooming them. You might want a parent to sign off on antibiotics, but I hardly believe that if a doctor came up to a severely sick child and recommended they start antibiotics, you would label them as a groomer.
Every peer nation in the world has "done the science" and decided transitioning children leads to worse health outcomes. Except in the United States, where a 2 hour telehealth appointment gets you fast tracked, and schools staffed by hysterical activist will go behind parents backs.
I would rather parents have an iron clad right to exercise their own judgement with respect to their child's medical decisions, than let weird fads like electroshock, icepick lobotomies, methamphetamines or sterilization drugs get pushed on them because of "the science".
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