(LifeSiteNews) — Alberta Premier Danielle Smith defended a law in her province banning transgender surgery for minors, saying the growing consensus from medical professionals is that “experimental drugs on children” and surgery should not be allowed.
Speaking with reporters last week at a press conference, Smith, asked about her law banning transgender surgery for minors, said she stands behind her decision to protect minors.
“As for trans policies, I think you’re seeing a fundamental recalibration on this around the world. In the United States, I would note the two of their major doctors’ associations have aligned themselves with our position that kids should not be receiving surgical treatment until they’re adults,” she said.
“We shouldn’t be doing experimental drugs on children. That’s becoming a very strong international position. And so I feel like we may have been first on that.”
Smith, however, did say that when a child becomes an adult, the government wants to “support that when a child becomes old enough to make mature adult decisions and understand the consequences.”
She also said that “when they’re 15 years of age and younger, they’re still a minor, and there’s a limited number of decisions that they’re able to make until they’re grown up enough to understand the consequences.”
Late last year, Alberta’s United Conservative Party (UCP) government under Smith passed Bill 9, ensuring that three bills passed this year – a ban on transgender surgery for minors, stopping men from competing in women’s sports, and protecting kids from extreme aspects of the LGBT agenda – remain law via the use of a rare constitutional tool.
The Protecting Alberta’s Children Statutes Amendment Act allows it to use what is known as the notwithstanding clause.
Bill 26, which was passed in December 2024, amends the Health Act to “prohibit regulated health professionals from performing sex reassignment surgeries on minors.”
As reported by LifeSiteNews, pro-LGBT activist groups, with the support of Alberta’s opposition New Democratic Party (NDP), have tried to stop the bill via lawsuits. It prompted the Smith government to appeal a court injunction earlier this year blocking the province’s ban on transgender surgeries and drugs for gender-confused minors.
Overwhelming evidence shows that persons who undergo so-called “gender transitioning” procedures are more likely to commit suicide than those who are not given such irreversible surgeries. In addition to catering to a false reality that one’s sex can be changed, transgender surgeries and drugs have been linked to permanent physical and psychological damage, including cardiovascular diseases, loss of bone density, cancer, strokes and blood clots, and infertility.
