For your information: http://www.medicaldaily.com/gender-reassignment-surgery-now-available-oregon-minors-without-parental-consent-342670
That is excellent news. I wish all states were that enlightened.
If 15 is the age of consent there, then 15 should be the age at which they can make their decisions regardless of the opinions of their parents. Here 16 is the age of consent and I believe that if you're old enough to have sex, you're old enough to know what gender you're supposed to be.
Considering that the prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain that deals with identity, does not finish developing until an average age of age 25, one could receive an operation only to later--when fully matured mentally--realise that it was a mistake.
Having sexual intercourse and altering your body with irreversible, life changing surgery require entirely different levels of maturity to decide upon.
And hence why there's a lot of consulting to determine the reasoning behind it. Consent is something different, it's being able to say yes, even though your parents are saying no.
The human brain may not finish developing until 25, but we're already making life determining decisions at 13, and we don't stop at 25. I could argue that you shouldn't be able to make any decisions until you reach 50 and have your mid-life crisis because you could change your mind about something, your whole life in fact.
It may not be a fully formed brain, but you know what you're doing and why. Any of these younger people who would be going against their parent's wishes to get reassignment would have to be pretty sure, don't you think, to go up against all that? Do you think they should be told “No, we know what's best for you”?
Are you intentionally missing the point for the sake of argument?
If the part of your brain that deals with identity is not formed until around age 25, then you do not know who you are until that age. It's not a complicated thing to grasp.
I can attest to the validity of this statement also, for the person I was when I was younger is completely different to the person I became when I reached 22+.
For the parents to have the opportunity to say no, they would need to know about it. These operations are permitted without the parents having the opportunity to even express their concerns or attempt to convince their children to wait a few years and see if they still feel the same. This is immoral, and a potentially life ruining law. Your attempts to justify this are genuinely unsettling. I am very grateful that you are not in a position to make decisions of this magnitude that could affect the lives of so many of our world's children.
I'm pretty sure I'm not. I just think there's no overlap here in our beliefs. Everything I say you take offence to and think I'm misunderstanding and vice versa. I don't think further conversation is going to be conducive to a shared understanding.