On Thursday, 19-year-old Chloe Cole, a female who has detransitioned after attempting to transition into a male, joined Senator Janae Shamp in support of a bill intended to require equal healthcare treatment for individuals who are detransitioning.
Shamp’s bill, SB 1511, would require insurers and providers of gender-altering drugs and surgeries to also provide and cover detransition procedures.
The bill would hold health care providers and insurance companies accountable for the damage they help cause by prescribing off-label drugs and experimenting on children and adults with potentially irreversible surgeries.
At the Thursday press conference, Cole shared her experience, the irreversible damage she suffered, and regret she feels from attempting to transition into the opposite sex.
By the age of 15, she had been diagnosed with depression, but that didn’t give doctors pause; they went ahead and removed both of her healthy breasts. According to the Center for Arizona Policy, Chloe was left with scars, the inability to ever breastfeed a child, and the question of whether she could even have her own children due to the many years of drugs.
“It’s been almost 3 years since I detransitioned but to this day, I am still experiencing complications. I don’t know if I can conceive or safely carry a child to term,” said Cole. “I am experiencing joint pain from the puberty blockers. I have been experiencing chronic pain in my pelvic region that is slowly getting worse with time. And I know I will never get my breasts back. I will always have the scars.”
“If doctors are going to block the natural puberty process of children and surgically alter the genitalia of people struggling with gender dysphoria, they must be prepared to undo the damage – as much as possible,” said Shamp. “And if insurers are going to pay for gender-altering drugs and surgeries, they must also pay for any effort to regain the victim’s God-given identity. My heart goes out to the growing number of people, especially children, who are struggling with their identity and are being pushed into physically altering their bodies as a solution, instead of receiving the mental health care they deserve.”
“Everything that I went through did nothing to address the underlying mental health issues I had,” said Cole. “My doctors, with their gender theories, thought all my troubles would go away as soon as I was transformed into something that vaguely resembled a boy. Their theories were wrong. I now have two giant scars across my chest that remind me every day that I was butchered by the institutions that we all thought we could trust. The drugs and surgeries changed my body, but they did not and could not change the undeniable reality that I am, and forever will be, a female.”