PRISHA MOSLEY: Doctors took my body apart for gender ‘care.’ Now they admit it was wrong
This week, two of the most influential medical associations in the country quietly admitted what detransitioners have been saying for years: The American Medical Association and the American Society of Plastic Surgeons both acknowledged that gender surgeries on minors should not be considered standard medical practice. The ASPS said surgery is not recommended "until a patient is at least 19 years old." To me, these policy reversals amount to a confession—one that arrived years too late, after childhoods like mine were permanently altered in the name of "care."
Childhood is precious. It is precious because children are innocent, and because they don’t yet understand the dangers and deception of the world. We choose our words carefully in front of children and avoid certain subjects that may be confusing or too graphic for them to comprehend. We make sure they’re in bed by a decent hour and that they eat their vegetables so they can grow up big and strong. We send them off to play with toys like Mr. Potato Head, to use their imagination and experience the kind of innocent fun that childhood is meant to hold.
Unfortunately, over the past 15 years, we have turned children into Mr. Potato Heads instead. I would know, because I was one of those children.
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When I was a teenager, I was introduced to transgender ideology, which led me into a series of irreversible decisions that I still live with today. Doctors and activists told me my body was made up of interchangeable parts, easily removed or added on. That lie cost me healthy parts of my body I can never get back. And the worst part is that I believed it—because that’s what my doctors told me.
Predatory activists and doctors enable delusional beliefs that children develop from video games, online communities on social media, and movies, and then trick young patients into signing up for losses they cannot possibly comprehend.
Let that sink in.
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For years, I was told that what I was experiencing wasn’t distress or trauma, but an identity issue. The solution, I was assured, wasn’t patience, counseling, or time to grow into a young woman. It was hormones, surgery, and the promise that if I altered my body enough, my mind would finally fall into place.
This is how thousands of young people today are taught to see their bodies: as customizable avatars—something separate from who they are, something malleable, something disposable.
What no one dared to explain to me was that a body is a vessel. My mind and body are not separate entities negotiating with each other. Instead, they are one integrated system, designed to support one another through every stage of the human experience. You cannot cut, suppress, or chemically alter a healthy body without consequences, no matter how alluring the promise of a fix may sound.
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My doctors, rather than healing me, removed perfectly healthy bodily functions in pursuit of fraudulent mental health goals. Cosmetic alterations cannot cure psychological suffering. Yet I was told—explicitly and implicitly—that removing healthy body parts would bring peace. I believed my doctors. I had no idea I would later regret these changes because detransition and regret were never discussed.
Regret is often downplayed. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, a prominent pediatrician and advocate of medical interventions for gender-confused children, said girls who have undergone mastectomies but want breasts later in life can "go and get them!" That statement alone reveals the depth of the deception. Natural breasts are not interchangeable with silicone implants, which lack natural sensation and cannot breastfeed. Olson-Kennedy is misleading young women and girls in service of an ideology.
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The industry wants patients to believe that nothing is truly lost. But tell that to me now: after giving birth to a beautiful baby and wanting more children, I have to live knowing that I cannot breastfeed because of my double mastectomy or feel the sensation of my baby’s skin on my chest. Doctors also fail to adequately warn patients about vaginal atrophy—or deterioration of the pelvis, uterus, and hips. They somehow do not see it as a problem when normal functioning body parts are lost, and see more silicone and surgery as the solution.
Activist doctors hide the consequences of their practices while continuing to sell false hope to new victims.
Now, the tide is turning. Also, this week, detransitioner Fox Varian won a landmark case, receiving a $2 million verdict after she sued her psychologist and surgeon for misleading her and her parents into believing that removal of her healthy breasts was necessary to save her life. Experts testified that surgery does not, in fact, prevent suicide. I share Fox Varian’s pain, having lived through a strikingly similar story—lied to and manipulated at a young age.
Real compassion tells children the truth: that their bodies are not broken, not up for trade, and not interchangeable parts on a plastic toy. If we truly want to protect children, we must stop treating them like experiments and start honoring the reality that childhood is not something you get back once it’s been taken apart.