Mia Hughes: Alberta judge relies on myth that gender drugs are lifesaving

Yahoo

07-07-2025

An Alberta judge has temporarily blocked the province's ban on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for minors, ruling that denying trans-identified youth these interventions would cause 'irreparable harm.'
The injunction, issued on June 27, stems from a Charter challenge led by LGBT charity Egale Canada. But Justice Allison Kuntz — and the advocacy groups opposing the ban — have it exactly backwards: it's the unproven interventions Alberta has restricted that have the potential to cause lasting harm — including sterility, sexual dysfunction, and impeded psychosocial development.
Echoing the language of the Charter challenge, Justice Kuntz cited several factors she believed would cause 'irreparable harm:' that the law would reinforce discrimination, inflict emotional harm, and lead to 'permanent physical changes that don't match their gender identity.' In other words, undergoing natural puberty would be harmful to these minors' identities.
Yet, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith takes a different view. 'The court had said that they think that there will be irreparable harm if the law goes ahead. I feel the reverse,' said Smith the day after the ruling. She made clear that her government intends to challenge the decision in the higher courts, expressing confidence that Alberta has 'a very solid case.'
That means taking the matter before the Alberta Court of Appeal — and make no mistake: Smith's confidence is well-founded. Bill 26 is backed, not only by multiple systematic evidence reviews and independent European investigations, but is also bolstered by recent developments in the U.S. legal landscape — most notably the Supreme Court's ruling in United States v. Skrmetti, which upheld Tennessee's right to restrict these same interventions.
The Tennessee case was brought by a coalition of civil rights lawyers led by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), who also argued that the state's ban on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for minors would cause harm. But the U.S. Supreme Court wasn't persuaded. It sided with Tennessee's right to protect children from unproven, high-risk interventions — dealing a decisive blow to those who advocate for medicalizing adolescent transgender identities.
Like the Egale-led Charter challenge, the ACLU's case relied on the claim that denying these drugs would cause irreversible physical and emotional harm — and increase the risk of suicide. But some of the U.S. Supreme Court Justices had done their homework. Citing the UK's Cass Report, one directly challenged the ACLU's most powerful rhetorical weapon: the 'transition or suicide' narrative.
In a pivotal exchange during the December 2024 oral arguments, Justice Samuel Alito confronted ACLU attorney Chase Strangio with the fact that there is no reliable evidence that puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones reduce suicide risk in this population. Strangio was forced to admit that suicide among trans-identified youth is extremely rare — and that, therefore, the claim these interventions are lifesaving is unsupported.
And just like that, the medical justification for subjecting healthy adolescents to these interventions has vanished. There is no life-threatening emergency — only experimental drugs being offered to confused youth still exploring their identities and trying to find their place in the world.
With Skrmetti, the ACLU learned a hard lesson — one Egale may soon face: in court, activist rhetoric doesn't cut it. Evidence matters. You can't win by shouting slogans or crying 'transphobia' when pressed. You can't call a treatment 'evidence-based' unless there is actually evidence to support it. Of course, Canada's judicial system differs significantly from that of the United States. Charter rulings tend to allow more room for ideological interpretation — and a Canadian court is not bound to follow the same evidentiary reasoning as the U.S Supreme Court. But the Skrmetti ruling is sure to have boosted the confidence of Smith and her legal team as they plan to take this fight to the higher courts.
Like the ACLU's challenge to Tennessee's ban, the Egale-led Charter challenge rests on a strange and radical argument. It asks the court to treat the natural developmental stage of puberty as 'harm,' and the denial of experimental drugs as a violation of Charter rights. Most striking is the Section 12 claim: that restricting access to blockers and hormones amounts to 'cruel and unusual treatment' — a clause intended for criminal punishment, not medical regulation. Framing a protective measure as state-inflicted cruelty makes a mockery of the Charter's purpose.
But more fundamentally, the challenge to Alberta's ban ignores a core ethical principle in paediatric care: a 'child's right to an open future.' Adolescents are still developing — physically, cognitively, and emotionally. To offer them potentially irreversible medical interventions based on transient identities is not an act of compassion; it's a form of foreclosure. True protection means safeguarding all the possible versions of the self that a young person has yet to discover — and shielding them from life-altering decisions they are not yet equipped to make.
In essence, the Egale-led Charter challenge isn't about protecting rights; it's about defending an indefensible medical experiment — one that treats unproven drugs as safe, evidence-based care and the natural course of puberty as a danger. When Alberta moves forward defending its law, the Court of Appeal will face a choice: follow the science-led shift seen across Europe — or give legal cover to a collapsing ideology. Justice Kuntz failed to see past the activist script. The real test now is whether Canada's upper courts will have not only the clarity to recognize it — but also the courage to reject it.
Mia Hughes specializes in researching pediatric gender medicine, psychiatric epidemics, social contagion and the intersection of trans rights and women's rights. She is the author of 'The WPATH Files,' a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, and director of Genspect Canada.
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