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North Carolina’s HB 805, which passed earlier this year, changed everything for me, as a detransitioner from that state. By extending the statute of limitations on medical malpractice for gender transitions, the bill has given me a second chance to receive justice against a medical establishment that destroyed my body.
Doctors put me on testosterone when I was just 17, destroying my healthy endocrine system and preventing my pubescent body from developing as it should have. Even after quitting testosterone, I continue to suffer the side effects: vaginal atrophy and sexual dysfunction, and chronic pain. I used to love singing, but no longer can – the hormones damaged my voice, too.
Fortunately, despite it all, I was able to conceive a healthy and beautiful baby boy, who is now a year old – but years of testosterone left me with a hormone imbalance that, per doctors, made him big when I was carrying him. Testosterone also stopped my hips from developing properly, making pregnancy painful and vaginal delivery impossible, which meant I had to have a C-section.
It wasn’t only my hormones that medical transition irreversibly damaged. When I was 18, a surgeon amputated my healthy breasts and botched the procedure, which not only meant that I would eventually be robbed of the choice to breastfeed my son – it meant that when I became a mother, I had milk trapped in my chest because, during the procedure, the surgeon had removed my nipples and sewn them on in the wrong place after cutting them up and reshaping them to look more “masculine.”
THE SUPREME COURT DID THE RIGHT THING. I KNOW BECAUSE I WAS PART OF A HORRIFYING GENDER TRANSITION
Each step of the way, the medical establishment profited from my suffering: first from the hormones and surgery that harmed me, then from corrective hormones and surgery to mitigate and try to heal the damage they caused.
Last year, in a landmark legal victory, my case for fraud and deception was cleared to go forward in court – the first detransitioner case of its kind to be declared legally viable. But because I had been mutilated at such a young age, my medical malpractice claims had been thrown out: the law had previously allowed for a four-year deadline from whenever you were injured, whether or not you knew that you were injured.
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So, in my case, even though I had no way of knowing that I would have breastmilk trapped in my chest until the age of 26 – when I went through pregnancy and gave birth to my son – the court ruled that I would not have been able to sue for that past the age of 22, since my botched double mastectomy was performed on me at the age of 18.
But HB 805 expands this statute of limitations to 10 years after you discover your injury, and, because it applies retroactively, it revives claims that were previously time-barred – such as mine. In light of this new development, I am hoping that my full case – fraud as well as medical malpractice – can advance.
The court is expected to make a decision on this motion soon. A favorable decision would allow me to pursue justice and hold my doctors accountable – and could inspire similar laws around the country for others harmed like I was.
I can’t get my breasts back. I can’t get my health back. But if HB 805 works for my case, it may cause a domino effect nationwide and could allow not just me, but detransitioners in other states, too, to get justice for what was done to us.
And it goes even deeper: if medical transition becomes a financially risky proposition, doctors and surgeons are less likely to perform it. While, in an ideal world, those who swear to do no harm would reject such mutilation in the first place, if the prospect of malpractice lawsuits means even just one fewer person suffering from the damage that I am, it will have been worth it.
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