The Supreme Court did the right thing. I know because I was part of a horrifying gender transition
The issues raised at the U.S. Supreme Court in United States of America v. Skrmetti are pretty academic to most Americans. The court concluded on June 18 that states can protect children from dangerous gender-transition procedures. Most people don’t have to know more than they want to about what is taking place in many hospitals in America.
But it’s different for me and for thousands of other people who have been defrauded by negligent doctors and harmful policies. I was part of the experiment.
The "procedures" the lawyers debated involve doctor-prescribed, counselor-encouraged drugs and surgeries that have been described as harmful, unnecessary, and high-risk by research and rigorously reviewed studies.
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I wasn’t informed of all the risks involved when I was told to take these drugs. I wasn’t given ethical or evidence-based treatment. I was given life-altering drugs and surgeries based on pseudoscience and the singular fact that I hated myself.
I believed the lies my doctors told me because I was vulnerable from abuse and trauma. By the time I was 14, I’d been raped, became pregnant, and suffered a miscarriage. By 16, I had been diagnosed with anorexia, anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder and was hospitalized for depression and self-harm. I tried to kill myself several times. A medical resident talked with me — once — and suddenly decided, despite all my other documented physical and mental health struggles, that my real trouble was a "gender-identity crisis."
None of my delusional beliefs were questioned, despite a history of severe mental illness and impairment that impacted my ability to perceive reality. Even though I was in treatment for a body-dysphoric disorder, I was simultaneously told to pursue gender-transition procedures for believing that I was a boy.
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At the beginning, these efforts were hidden from my parents. When they finally did find out, healthcare providers bullied them into giving consent with lies that had no basis in reality. They said that the trauma responses I was describing were "gender dysphoria," greenlighting me for testosterone at age 17. At 18, I underwent a double mastectomy. It all happened so fast, but it took my mind years to become well enough for me to even realize what damage had been done.
I still live with that damage and the life-altering consequences of the unnecessary drugs and surgery I was given. The testosterone changed me — not only my appearance, but the very structure of my body. My endocrine system doesn’t function without external hormones now. And I can’t regulate my hormones on my own. I won’t ever be able to nurse my own children because they removed my healthy breasts.
So, it’s hard for me — and so many like me who also have been lied to — to understand why the Biden administration and groups like the American Civil Liberties Union thought these drugs and surgeries were a magic bullet to cure distress — especially when growing international evidence is revealing that these drugs and surgeries don’t help, and countries across Europe are abandoning and banning these practices.
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Respected scientists say that these procedures do great harm. My body says so, too. Thankfully, more than half of our 50 states have now passed laws to prevent the medical profession from promoting these dangerous procedures. And in October 2024, a national poll found that a majority of Americans support a federal law protecting children from being experimented on with puberty blockers and unnecessary, body-altering surgeries.
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Yet activists and the previous administration persisted in trying to stop states from ensuring children receive healthcare rooted in biological reality and truth. States like Alabama, Idaho, and now Tennessee — in the Skrmetti case that the Supreme Court just decided — were all forced to defend their right to regulate healthcare providers and protect children.
I was one of those children. I will suffer for the rest of my life for believing, in my confusion, the people who perpetuated these cruel lies.
But what happened to me — and so many others who are detransitioning — is a preventable tragedy. I certainly don’t like reliving all that I’ve been through, recounting for courts, journalists, and audiences what terrible things these transition procedures inflicted on me.
But the people who I thought were coming to save me ended up drugging me and removing my healthy breasts. I don’t want that to happen to any other child. I don’t want anyone to experience the pain I face now, every day. I want people to have the truth, not lies. I want everyone to live full and flourishing lives.