A 21-year-old female detransitioner who underwent hormone therapy as a teenager is suing the American Academy of Pediatrics for allegedly pushing youth gender transition and lying about the dangers of such medical interventions.
Isabelle Ayala is accusing the progressive professional medical association, infamous for endorsing so-called gender-affirming care for minors, of civil conspiracy, fraud, and medical malpractice, according to a lawsuit filed Monday and obtained by the Daily Wire. The AAP, the lawsuit claims, knowingly misled the public on youth gender transition by releasing and circulating a 2018 policy statement endorsing the “affirmative model” for gender dysphoria. The statement lacked sufficient evidence to back the safety and efficacy of the model.
Ayala also named her doctors as defendants, for “testing” the “radical new approach on patients like her.” The physicians are Dr. Rafferty, Dr. Forcier, Dr. Gibson, Dr. Morris, Dr. Allen, Dr. Sherer, and Dr. Wagner, as well as Lifespan Physician Group.
The model that specifically Rafferty and Forcier applied “included immediate, no-questions-asked ‘affirming’ of a child’s desired gender and quickly placing them on a conveyor belt of life-altering puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and/or experimental surgeries,” the lawsuit said. Rafferty authored the 2018 AAP policy.
Ayala had a history of mental-health struggles and preexisting psychological comorbidities such as anxiety, depression, autism, ADHD, and PTSD from a sexual assault at a young age. Despite this, Rafferty and Forcier hurried her along the path of medicalization for her gender confusion, the lawsuit said.
After a single, brief meeting, Rafferty recommended Ayala for testosterone, but her mother refused to give consent. In a subsequent meeting, Rafferty and his team persuaded Ayala’s mother to allow the prescription by stating it was the only medical avenue to save her child from suicide. Multiple doctors bamboozled Ayala, the lawsuit said, into believing that taking testosterone would ease her mental anguish and restore her physical health. But only six months after first taking testosterone, Ayala attempted suicide.
Yet, the hormone “treatments” continued for the duration of her time seeing these doctors until she left Rhode Island for Florida and decided to go off the testosterone. Ayala has suffered many physical complications from the testosterone injections, the lawsuit said. Among the issues and ailments are vaginal atrophy from the extensive use of testosterone, excess facial and body hair, compromised bone structure, and ongoing mental issues, anxiety, depression, and regret. She is unsure whether her fertility has been irreversibly compromised, and she has since developed an autoimmune disease “that only the males in her family have a history of.”
Ayala’s is the first detransitioner lawsuit in America so far to name the AAP as a defendant. The AAP, the lawsuit said, ditched the consensus, scientifically supported approach known as “watchful waiting.” In that strategy, gender-confused children are given counseling and psychotherapy to help them navigate the disruptive parts of puberty, instead of being prescribed cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers, and procedures.
When a AAP committee, called the “LGBT Health & Wellness” committee, started drafting the affirming model policy, they discovered that the model was not supported by scientific research. Yet they persisted anyway and released the policy because of their progressive ideological commitments, the lawsuit said.
The plaintiff finds the “inescapable conclusion that the Gender Policy Statement was knowingly created and published as fraudulent with the obvious intent of misleading the public as to the evidentiary backing for its radical policy and the dangers and risks associated with the treatments it promotes.”