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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.
The groomer most likely believes that having sex with the child is mutually beneficial and while it serves his own interests, also serves the best interests of the child.
And in the case of trans surgeries, I can easily see the doctor as thinking the surgery is good for trans activism, as well as good for the child.
But he/she is wrong.
There is no royal road to geometry, and there is no substitute to actually deciding who is right and who is wrong in each individual case.
(Sometimes, we can establish heuristics where >99.999% of cases following a given pattern have a common answer; e. g. "Anyone advocating for paedophilia is wrong." However, the heuristic "If a parent disagrees with their child, the parent is right and the child is wrong." does not reach anywhere near five nines.
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Some people may think that way, you and I will likely disagree on how likely or prevalent such things are.
Frankly, I don't much care if the doctor think it's good for his bank account, his social status, or his pet activist causes as long as any procedure is still deemed in the best interests of the child (and keep in mind the doctors are performing these procedures based on their belief in the scientific/medical literature that demonstrates their efficacy, not because of some personal sexual motivation that gets twisted to include the child. That is the key difference). These assessments can be wrong of course, but that's no reason to abandon them altogether
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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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