There are certain things we expect from our medical professionals — basic services that are the very basis of their profession. We expect our doctors to try to accurately diagnose and treat the underlying cause of our symptoms; to provide us the best care they can; and to tell us the truth.

But a generation of kids who were told that taking life-altering hormones and drugs would heal their mental health are coming of age and finding their voice, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that a large number of doctors and medical associations have knowingly lied to their patients and, subsequently, ruined their lives. (READ MORE: Groff Gives Teacher a Second Chance Against the Pronoun Police)

When Isabelle Ayala was just 14 years old, she was admitted to a children’s hospital in Rhode Island for suicidal thoughts resulting from childhood sexual abuse and trauma. Instead of addressing the root problems of her severe depression, her physicians, including Drs. Jason Rafferty and Michelle Forcier, affirmed her expression of gender dysphoria and urged her to undergo a medical transition.

Now, at the age of 20, Ayala is a detransitioner and is suing those same doctors and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) for lying “about the impact of the radical sex-change treatments” that they prescribed her, as the Daily Wire reports.

The Medical Men Who Lied

According to the Daily Wire, which obtained the lawsuit, Ayala underwent months of testosterone treatments despite her declining mental health condition. At six months into treatment, she attempted to commit suicide. The transitioning obviously failed miserably — but her doctors didn’t take her off the drugs.

When Ayala moved from Rhode Island to Florida with her family, Rafferty prescribed her so much testosterone that, when she quit “cold turkey” a year later, she didn’t do so because she ran out. (READ MORE: Medically Transitioning Minors: The 6th Circuit Strikes Back)

The lawsuit alleges that Ayala’s treatment left her with extensive repercussions, including “vaginal atrophy from the extensive use of testosterone; … excess facial and body hair; … [and] compromised bone structure.” As a detransitioner, Ayala still struggles with anxiety and depression, which have been further compacted by the regret she experiences over her treatment. She is also unsure whether her fertility has been “irreversibly compromised,” and she has “contracted an autoimmune disorder that only the males in her family have a history of.”

Ayala’s suit is not the only one to be filed by a detransitioner against doctors after regretting the “gender-affirming” care they received — in fact, another detransitioner began the process to sue the same two doctors on Friday as well — but what makes this one significant is that the AAP is a defendant.

In 2018, Rafferty was one of the leading authors of the AAP’s policy statement on transgenderism in kids. That document, which was recently “reaffirmed” in August 2023, insists that “youth who identify as TGD [transgender and gender diverse] have access to comprehensive, gender-affirming, and developmentally appropriate health care.” To that end, it recommended that adolescents identifying as transgender or gender diverse receive social affirmation, legal recognition, puberty blockers, and even surgery (determined on a case-by-case basis).

America Is Behind

Internationally, that’s an extreme position. In the Free Press, Finnish Dr. Riittakerttu Kaltiala writes of her experience evaluating and treating adolescents with gender dysphoria. After years in the clinic, she became convinced that providing “gender-affirming” care to teenagers is simply wrong.

Based on research conducted in Holland, Kaltiala had been under the impression that the majority of her patients would be happy teenage boys whose only disorder was being born in the wrong body. Instead, her clientele was 90 percent girls between the ages of 15 and 17, most of whom struggled with severe mental health:

It was common for them to have been bullied—but generally not regarding their gender presentation. In adolescence they were lonely and withdrawn. Some were no longer in school, instead spending all their time alone in their room. They had depression and anxiety, some had eating disorders, many engaged in self-harm, a few had experienced psychotic episodes. Many—many—were on the autism spectrum.

Remarkably, few had expressed any gender dysphoria until their sudden announcement of it in adolescence.

Kaltiala believes the rate of regret among adolescents who transition is much higher than the statistics shoved down our throats typically suggest. “[O]ne new study shows that nearly 30 percent of patients in the sample ceased filling their hormone prescription within four years,” she writes, adding that gender dysphoria tends to resolve itself in 80 percent of adolescents during “natural puberty.”

Based on evidence such as Kaltiala’s, Finland, the U.K., and Sweden all concluded that “gender transition should be postponed ‘until adulthood'” — at least one step in the right direction. (EXCLUSIVE: RFK Jr., Threatened Again, Sues the Biden Administration)

The U.S. is significantly behind. Not only are children receiving irreversible treatments, but they’re being indoctrinated into the cult from a young age. By targeting the organization making these medical recommendations, Ayala’s case has the potential to upend what has been established care for children. It could mark the first step in ending the legal mutilation of children in the U.S.