• Lesley Naik.
• La Trobe University. lnaik@hotmail.com
• J Law Med. 2012 Dec 1; 20 (2): 453-63.

AbstractIt is an established legal principle that certain sterilisation procedures fall outside parental power to consent to medical treatment and thus require court authorisation prior to their performance. The practical assessment of whether court authorisation is required has traditionally focused on determining whether the procedure is one which is "therapeutic". However, the development of the legal meaning of a "therapeutic sterilisation" through judicial interpretation may have resulted in a divergence in the legal meaning of the term and its practical application. Cases involving sterilisation in the context of gender dysphoria have also raised some conceptual challenges to the previously utilised "therapeutic"/"non-therapeutic" distinction. This article advocates for the terminology "special medical procedure" to replace the words "therapeutic" and "non-therapeutic" and reintroduces the "but for" test as a potential practical tool to assist medical practitioners to negotiate this area of law successfully.

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