Addressing the Most Serious Medical Scandal of the 21st Century: Transitioning Children

by Prisha Mosley

Early this month, the Michigan House pushed the most significant effort to date to address the most serious medical scandal of the 21st century: transitioning children. The bills, HB 4466-68, would prohibit doctors from performing or facilitating gender transition procedures on minors, establish professional penalties for providers who violate the law, and require insurance companies to cover care for individuals seeking treatment for complications from transition procedures or attempting to detransition. At their core, these bills recognize that children—and those who come to regret their transition later in life—should be protected from irreversible medical intervention that have lasting psychological and physiological impacts.

Detransitioners like me have been warning lawmakers for years that the medical system failed us. As vulnerable minors, we were told that hormones and surgeries would solve our distress. Instead, many of us were left with lifelong complications, unanswered medical questions, and the painful realization that the adults entrusted with our care never fully explored any potential underlying causes of our suffering. Across the country, legislators are finally beginning to listen.

Today, more than 25 states have enacted laws protecting minors from medical fraud and abuse in the name of “transition.” Some states, including Texas and Ohio, have gone even further by recognizing the unique needs of detransitioners and establishing resources to help those harmed by these interventions. After a legal settlement with the state of Texas and the Department of Justice, Texas Children’s Hospital agreed to establish a detransitioner clinic, where those of us who have come to regret or have severe complications from the hormones and surgeries, can finally seek treatment. This was a very encouraging step in the right direction.

Yet Michigan, where I reside now and detransitioned, alongside states like Colorado, has largely remained on the sidelines of this debate, or outright supported misinformation and pseudoscience. Too often, politicians have chosen to protect this sick ideology and the medical establishment rather than confront the mounting evidence of poor patient outcomes and stories of regret.

Despite the short notice surrounding the hearing, HB4466-68 successfully passed in the Michigan House. Representative Brad Paquette, a leading advocate against “gender-affirming care” in Michigan, said on X, “These medicalized pathways for physically healthy children are not founded upon any quality long term evidence and the harm done in the name of care is coming to light through the advocacy of incredible Michiganders like Prisha Mosley and Jonni Skinner. Their experiences, along with the systematic reviews across the world can only lead us to call for an end to the experimentation. We also must do our best to support and bring justice for those who have been harmed. We passed significant legislation (HB 4466-68) this evening to move us one step closer to these worthy goals.”

Representative Paquette’s comments reflect something many detransitioners like me have been saying for years: this is not a partisan issue. It is a human issue.

Children deserve careful, ethical medical care grounded in evidence, not experimental treatments that permanently alter healthy bodies before they are mature enough to understand the consequences.

As a detransitioner, I am thankful that politicians in my home state are finally listening.

When I was a teenager, I was manipulated by doctors, therapists, and counselors to believe that I was a boy. Instead of providing real help for my mental state—after I experienced sexual abuse as a child and a hard home life—they instead fast tracked me to get hormones and surgery. Eventually, as I grew up, I realized I had been lied to all along. I would never be able to be a boy, no matter how uncomfortable I was in my body.

For too long, detransitioners have been ignored, dismissed, or treated as inconvenient exceptions. We are none of those things. We are living proof that these interventions carry serious risks, and that children desperately need real help that does not involve irreversible medicalization and lifelong complications.

Michigan still has work to do. So does much of the country. More northern states should follow the lead of Ohio and similar states that have acted to protect vulnerable children from medical transition and provide meaningful support for detransitioners. The end goal should be ensuring that no more children are harmed, and that those of us who already have been are finally given the care, acknowledgment, and justice we deserve.

Prisha Mosley is a detransitioner.