“My Body, My Choice! Unless You’re Trans” Say Canada’s Conservatives

Canadian Conservatives appear confused when dreamy thoughts of American-style anti-vax liberty crash headfirst into the reality of medical autonomy for Canada’s children — both cis and trans

In his 1859 seminal work On Liberty, the philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote that people should be free to act in any manner they choose unless their actions cause harm to others. This became known as the Harm Principle, whereby the autonomy of the individual is supreme and is only to be curtailed when it causes harm to other members of the community.

This tenet has been a clarion call for conservative-minded people in the over 150 years since it was published. Or, to be more accurate, for adherents of classical liberalism, which, ironically, is actually more in line with modern conservatism and libertarianism.

The inviolability of bodily autonomy is the bedrock principle upon which all human rights are built. In an open and democratic society, any removal or limitation upon the rights of a specified, identifiable individual or group can pass only after the most rigorous of tests and sober consideration.

The removal of human rights must never, ever be left to the popular vote of the majority.

As the pandemic demonstrated, if we accept that vaccines and mask mandates serve to limit the spread of an objectively harmful infectious disease, then the corollary to that is the refusal to administer or receive vaccines, or to refuse to mandate and enforce the wearing of masks, is to cause demonstrable harm to others in the public sphere.

At the Conservative Party of Canada policy convention earlier this month, delegates voted unanimously in favour of endorsing a policy that Canadians should have bodily autonomy when it comes to vaccine mandates and other health concerns. That all Canadians “have the freedom and right to refuse vaccines for moral, religious, medical or other reasons.”

Yet in the same breath, without a trace of self-awareness, 69% of voting attendees endorsed a position of denying “life-altering” affirming medical care to trans children and youth.

Never mind that the entire purpose of gender-affirming care, from social affirmation to eventual medical support, is meant to be life-altering.

Where Conservatives diverge from trans people and the medical community is whether “life-altering” is good or not. Their stated desire for unlimited bodily autonomy for “other health concerns” does, apparently, have limits.

And let’s be clear, the use of “medical” in the wording of this motion was merely cover for their real goals: the denial of even the most elementary social care and transition support for trans school children. The provinces of New Brunswick and Saskatchewan unilaterally moved to ban the affirmation of trans identities in school children under age 16 without explicit parental consent.

This despite all professional organizations with expertise in researching and providing care to trans kids being unanimous in that supportive social transition is the primary treatment to improving mental health outcomes for this group.

That Conservatives just happen to not like trans kids very much is clear. The levels of paternalism and “saviourism” on display at gatherings such as the policy convention, and in the provincial legislation of Saskatchewan and New Brunswick, is gobsmacking.

Members of the Conservative political party are the people most likely to scream “Freedom!” for them and theirs, and for less government to benefit them and theirs. They are also the same people most likely to impose their own narrow moral restrictions on what other people can do with their bodies, and to abuse the machinations of government to ensure their will is done.

For decades now, pro-choice advocates have used “My body, my choice!” as a rallying cry, hewing rigorously to the tenets of modern conservative and libertarian philosophy. And such cries have been studiously ignored by those who otherwise profess an admiration for these principles in a vacuum.

Until the pandemic, that is.

Then all bets were off, and Conservatives acted like they invented the cry of “My body, my choice!” as they sought to favour the rights of the individual to the clear detriment of the greater community. That a society of individuals, with no consideration for a greater good, is no society at all was a lesson lost on them.

In the United States, those states that rejected vaccine and mask mandates in the face of evidence, particularly prior to the widespread introduction of effective Covid vaccines, were also the states that most severely curtail abortion access and trans-affirming care. Conversely, those states that enacted and enforced vaccine and mask mandates are also the states that have the broadest access to abortion and trans-affirming care.

Likewise in Canada, those provinces that saw the greatest (or at least the loudest) opposition to public health mandates are also the provinces where there is the greatest moral opposition to the bodily autonomy of other people, such as with abortion, particularly when it comes to a narrow Biblical (mis)interpretation of morals that inform their worldviews.

As with abortion restrictions, the opposition of Conservatives to trans-affirming medical care typically follow two paths: a religious or moralistic objection, or one of paternalism or saviourism. In either case, those opposed are propelled by the conviction that only other people are to be saved from their own autonomy and self-determination.

In all cases they either ignore completely the science and studies that disprove their positions, or cherry-pick from the data in order to present out-of-context snippets that ostensibly support their views.

Yet in both abortion and trans-affirming medical care, as with quite literally any medical procedure or intervention, the decision is one that must rest solely between the individual and their health care providers. Abortion is a fraught issue for the pregnant individual, and a decision is not going to be made any more rational or effective through state intervention.

As it is with trans-affirming medical care, especially for minors, these are weighty decisions that are solely the purview of the individual and their physicians. Unless a minor has been emancipated by the courts, the involvement and support of at least one parent or guardian is already a necessary factor in such decisions.

The state engaging in populist politics to exclusively target trans youth for removal of the right to bodily autonomy is as legally and morally reprehensible as removing the right to choose and to access timely abortion care for pregnant people, most of whom are women.

All medical professionals in Canada who provide trans-affirming medical care adhere strictly to the Standards of Care developed and maintained by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH).

That such care results in objectively better health outcomes for trans youth is not in question by any informed and reasonable person. Yet the same people who are most likely to raise objections to abortion access, and to public health mandates are the same people who will oppose the existence of trans youth and their right to medical care and support. All the while insisting on their own rights to their own bodily autonomy.

The result is that trans youth are refused medical support until they are adults, when the effects of puberty are irreversible without significant surgical interventions costing tens of thousands of dollars, to say nothing of the poorer mental health outcomes caused by needlessly enduring the wrong puberty.

By the time legal challenges to new laws targeting trans youth — to say nothing of the near certainty of future laws — make it to the Supreme Court, incalculable damage to vulnerable children will have been done.

It is a fact that Canadian trans and queer youth are already the most at-risk group among their peers for suicidal ideation and abusive treatment by their families and society, and they experience trauma and PTSD at rates far above their peers and the general population.

• 77% of trans respondents in an Ontario survey had seriously considered suicide and 45% had attempted suicide
• Trans youth and those who had experienced physical or sexual assault were found to be at greatest risk
• Higher rates of depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive and phobic disorders, suicidality, self-harm, and substance abuse including nicotine and illicit drugs
• Double the risk for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) than heterosexual cisgender people
• An Ontario study found that half of trans people were living on less than $15,000 a year
• 20% had experienced physical or sexual assault due to their identity, and that 34% were subjected to verbal threats or harassment

Additional factors that impact mental health and well-being for trans youth include the process of “coming out” — especially the forced kind of coming out Conservatives are mandating — as well as access to gender transition supports and services, internalized oppression, isolation and alienation, and loss of family or social supports.

Conveniently ignored by those most opposed to the bodily autonomy of trans youth is the fact that children in Canada already possess medical autonomy, gender identity is already a protected characteristic in both federal and provincial human rights legislations, and that the Supreme Court has consistently ruled in favour of trans people and their right to self-identity.

Conservatives cannot have it both ways. Either the inviolability of individual autonomy is sacrosanct for everyone, or for no one.

If Conservatives insist on individual autonomy even in the midst of the largest public health crisis in a century, one that affected everyone, then the right to medical autonomy for trans youth that affects only them must also remain inviolable.

Meghan McKie is a retired Naval officer, a writer, a crafter, and vinyl record enthusiast. She is a trans woman who transitioned on active duty.