A Canadian woman fighting a legal battle with doctors to prevent her 17-year-old transgender child from undergoing a double mastectomy has fuelled an ongoing global debate about whether adolescents should be able to decide to change gender. The teenager began hormone therapy in July and was due to undergo surgery in Vancouver last week when a judge stopped doctors with a temporary injunction after they were sued by the mother, who cannot be named to protect the child's identity.

The mother, from Vancouver, said the surgery was "unnecessary" and her child had been influenced by "propaganda" in school, a fad, and "brainwashing" by the media. "Before she learned it at school, she never questioned her identity," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The case comes amid a sharp rise in adolescents seeking to change gender that has raised questions about parental rights, child autonomy, and the age at which someone can make serious medical decisions.

According to British Columbia's Infants Act, minors can receive health care independently of their guardians if they are deemed to have the necessary understanding of the risks and benefits, and it is considered in the child's best interest. Morgane Oger, a trans rights activist, said the Canadian provincial government introduced the Infants Act to keep parents out of health decisions taken by teenagers and their doctors and "protect youth from exactly what this mother is doing". Read more via Openly/Reuters