A 23-year-old Texas woman claims that gender-affirming doctors “gaslit” her into transitioning to male as a teenager — and even coached her on how to scam insurers so she could get “top surgery” to remove her breasts.
Soren Aldaco, a detransitioner who is currently embroiled in a legal fight against the medical practitioners involved in her transition, alleged that various doctors and counselors recklessly pressured her to start taking testosterone and estrogen blockers when she was just 17.
In an eye-opening op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, Aldaco said she was given the meds after just a 30-minute consultation with a nurse practitioner.
Two years later, at 19 years old, she underwent a double breast removal — a serious operation which she alleged the surgeon botched.
Aldaco, who started identifying as trans when she was 11 years old and pursued countless medical interventions, claimed that gender-affirming surgeons pushed her to have the elective double mastectomy at the Crane Clinic in Austin.
“My surgeon made sure to facilitate my physical transition as much as possible, spoon-feeding me talking points for insurance coverage,” she said.
“After this surgery, I suffered major complications. I had severe bruising all down my rib cage, along my sides and on my chest. My surgeons repeatedly dismissed me when I came to them with these problems.”
When Aldaco, whose case went before the Texas Supreme Court this week, eventually took herself to the emergency room, with “kind” doctors who were “used to working with vulnerable women,” that’s when she realized that she had been manipulated.
“The realization that I had been gaslit sunk in as I watched them cut my scars back open, empty out nearly three cups of blood, and sew in Penrose drains,” Aldaco said.
“I made the decision to face who I really was — without the medicine, without the hormones or additional surgeries — six months after this experience.”
Aldaco, who had a troubled upbringing and had long struggled with her body image, blamed a psychiatrist for initially planting the seed that her “distress” was linked to her transgender identity.
“Piecing together my turbulent family life and adolescent internet habits, among other things, it dawned on me that I had never been ‘born in the wrong body.’ There was no way to be born in the wrong body at all,” she said.
“Through this journey of self-exploration, I have come to realize how coercive gender-identity ideology was for me, disguising harm as compassion.”
Aldaco filed the lawsuit against her nurse practitioner, psychiatrist and surgeons in 2023, alleging they pushed her towards transitioning without offering alternatives.
The litigation kicked off a lengthy court battle — which has since escalated to the Supreme Court — after the defendants argued her suit was outside the statute of limitations for medical malpractice claims in the Lone Star state.
In January, a 22-year-old Westchester woman who identified as a boy in her teen years won a $2 million decision in a landmark lawsuit against New York doctors accused of pushing a double mastectomy on her when she was a minor.
Fox Varian had the life-altering surgery when she was just 16 years old — getting approval from a psychologist and a surgeon, both of whom a jury found liable for medical malpractice on Jan. 30.