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The clinic concluded it was in the child’s best interests to proceed with hormone therapy to transition from a female body to a male one. The child and his mother signed a consent form that outlined the risks, including that testosterone treatment in young adolescents is still fairly new and “long-term effects are not fully known.”

The father went to court to try to block the treatment from proceeding, but in February B.C. Supreme Court Justice Gregory Bowden ruled that the child was “exclusively entitled” to consent to treatment under the B.C. Infants Act and that there should be no further delay, citing a previous suicide attempt.

Bowden went on to declare that the child must also be referred to as male or using male pronouns and that any attempt to persuade the child to abandon treatment or references to the child as a girl or using female pronouns “shall be considered to be family violence.”

In April, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Francesca Marzari, responding to a separate application from the boy’s lawyers, issued a protection order restraining the father from publicly discussing the case after finding that interviews he’d given to conservative media outlets had potentially exposed the child to violence and harassment.

“I find that (the father) is using (his child) to promote his own interests above those of his child,” Marzari said.

A youth seeking gender affirming health care is to be treated — and must be treated — in the same way as any other youth seeking any other medical treatment

In appealing both judgments, the father — whose court filings continue to refer to his child as his “daughter” — argues that the lower court failed to consider the complexity of gender dysphoria and ignored evidence from the experts he had put forward. Instead, the lower court conflated the best interests of his child with his child’s wishes, and the wishes of “conflicted, profit-driven doctors pushing transgender ideology.”