US detransitioners take ‘gender-affirming industry’ to court

Two women who say they were pushed into medical transitioning as teenage girls are taking legal action against their ‘gender-affirming’ medics.

Luka Hein alleges that University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) staff fast-tracked her into drastic sex-swap surgery, while Isabella Ayala accuses doctors in Rhode Island of ruining her body with cross-sex hormones.

In April, the US Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services, Rachel Levine – a man who lives as a woman – claimed any opposition to ‘gender-affirming care’ is “ideologically and politically motivated”.

‘Barbaric’

Speaking of her experience Luka said: “I am someone who went through the gender-affirming care industry as a minor.

I was one of the kids that needed the adults to step up and do what is right.

“I was a teenager with multiple comorbidities and mental health issues who was struggling and was put down this path instead of given the help I actually needed, resulting in the first medical intervention I ever had being a double mastectomy at 16.”

“I was one of the kids that needed a chance to just grow up and get the help I needed. I was one of the kids that needed the adults to step up and do what is right.”

The Center for American Liberty, which is supporting Luka in her action against UNMC, said her “trauma at the hands of medical professionals” is “a wake-up call exposing the nation to the barbaric realities of ‘gender affirming care’”.

‘Forever damaged’

Court papers filed on behalf of Isabelle state that she “is now twenty years old and longs for what could have been and to have her healthy, female body back”.

According to her lawyers, the “extensive use of testosterone” between the ages of 14 and 16 – prescribed by medics at Lifespan teaching hospitals in Providence –  has resulted in multiple health problems.

These include, the lawsuit reads, “excess facial and body hair”, “compromised bone structure”, and the fear that “her fertility has been irreversibly compromised”.

Doctors who worked for Lifespan Physician Group are accused of “sending Isabelle down their path of ‘gender-affirming’ medicalization that has forever damaged Isabelle’s physical and mental health”.

Tripled

A study has found that the number of trans-affirming surgeries performed in the United States nearly tripled between 2016 and 2019.

‘National Estimates of Gender-Affirming Surgery in the US’, published in JAMA Network Open, analysed national data samples from 2016 to 2020 and found that the number of trans-affirming surgeries rose from 4,552 in 2016 to 13,011 in 2019.

Overall, more than half of patients (52.3 per cent) were between 19 and 30 years old, while the most common surgery (56.6 per cent) related to the breast or chest.