First of all we should understand the way medical professionals handle gender dysphoria children and teens, please review the process below:
This treatment is approved by the biggest medical and psychological association:
American Medical Association Resolution: Removing Financial Barriers to Care for Transgender Patients (2008) An established body of medical research demonstrates the effectiveness and medical necessity of mental health care, hormone therapy and sex reassignment surgery as forms of therapeutic treatment for many people diagnosed with GID… Therefore, be it RESOLVED, that the AMA supports public and private health insurance coverage for treatment of gender identity disorder. >http://www.tgender.net/taw/ama_resolutions.pdf Resolution H-185.950: Removing Financial Barriers to Care for Transgender Patients (2008) Our AMA supports public and private health insurance coverage for treatment of gender identity disorder as recommended by the patient’s physician. (Res. 122; A-08) http://www.ama-assn.org/resources/doc/PolicyFinder/policyfiles/HnE/H-185.950.HTM
The American Medical association is the largest organization of physicians with a membership of 220,000.
American Psychiatric Association Position Statement on Access to Care for Transgender and Gender Variant Individuals (2012) The American Psychiatric Association: 1. Recognizes that appropriately evaluated transgender and gender variant individuals can benefit greatly from medical and surgical gender transition treatments. 2. Advocates for removal of barriers to care and supports both public and private health insurance coverage for gender transition treatment. 3. Opposes categorical exclusions of coverage for such medically necessary treatment when prescribed by a physician.
The APA has a membership of around 130,000 and is the largest psychological organization. Transgenderism is mainly studied in the psychological field.
Quoting Mchugh and ignoring the support of the rest of the medical and psychological community is huge red flag. There will always be one dissenting scientist who believes anything, you need to look at the support of the entire field of psychology and medicine to make an argument from authority like this article is trying to make.
This law establishes a minimum age which is good, no child should go on hormone therapy at 11. No medical institution has that practice, but it's still good ban something like that anyway. The minimum age is unusual however, most medical institutions recommend the minimum age of 16 so it's strange to make it 15. However most medical institutions will require the patient to be 16 anyway, so it's not a huge deal.
As for parental consent it is a complex issue. The fact about being transgender is that the person will often be abandoned, abused, or ignored by family. A transgender person often loses friends and others will shun or harass him/her. The point is that there is a lot of prejudice and it's often not safe to come out to parents and expect their support. They don't consider how much the child/adolescent is suffering from depression and how much these treatments help their son/daughter. And these treatments do help. Access to current medical treatment halves the suicide rate among those with gender dysphoria. Another factor in preventing transgender suicides is parental support of the child/adolescent:
Among those who desired medical transition, those on hormone therapy were about half as likely to have seriously considered suicide (RR = 0.52; 95 % CI: 0.37, 0.75).
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/15/525
These treatments do help, and it's not just a choice made by the adolescent alone. Doctors and psychologists are the ones who authorize these treatments, and their authority should be respected.