DOUGLAS COUNTY, Nebraska (LifeSiteNews) – A 21-year-old woman named Luka Hein is suing the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) for irreversibly harming her by rushing a double mastectomy to “treat” her gender dysphoria at age 16 without first exploring less radical or permanent options.
The Center for American Liberty, one of the groups representing Hein (along with the Thomas More Society and Keating O’Gara law firm), explains that as a teenager she suffered mental health issues due to a variety of traumatic events, which eventually manifested in self-cutting and suicidal thoughts. While searching online for an answer, she stumbled upon gender “transitioning,” leading her to think of herself as male and pursue a transition.
In just two visits, doctors at UNMC’s gender clinic sold her on the idea of jumping straight to breast removal, convincing her and her parents that she would likely kill herself if she did not go along with it as well as concealing from her studies indicating that gender “reassignment” surgery was potentially harmful, according to the lawsuit.
“As a proximate result of the actions of the Defendants, and each of them, Luka’s breasts were surgically amputated, leaving her physically and psychologically scarred. If she has not also suffered the loss of her fertility, Luka has lost her ability to breastfeed thereby depriving her of the maternal benefits of nursing,” the suit contends. “Luka’s future children will be deprived of the natural bonding effects and nutritional benefits of breastfeeding.”
Another proximate result was that Hein “was placed on testosterone for four years which caused the disruption of her endocrine system, heart damage, deepening of her voice, pain in her vocal cords, joints, lumbar spine, hands, wrists, elbows and pelvic area, as well as permanent dysregulation of her reproductive organs.”
#detrans #detransition 2/2 pic.twitter.com/5gSC0O84MX
— Luka Hein (@onedonebun) November 3, 2022
“There was no stopping to question if this was the right way to deal with the discomfort I was feeling around my body,” Luka told the Daily Caller News Foundation last year. “The only acceptable answer to any medical professional was to ‘affirm’ what I said instead of offering any alternative ways of dealing with the issues I was suffering from. Those constant affirmations really did push me down the path of further medicalization.”
“My mom was very concerned and opposed to the idea of me getting surgery but was bullied by my dad and pressured by the doctors and therapists into being ok with it,” she said at the time. “My parents were told the same thing so many other parents in these situations are told, ‘Would you rather have a dead daughter or a living son?’ despite the fact that, no matter all my mental health struggles, I had never been suicidal.”
Evidence shows that “affirming” gender confusion carries serious harms, especially when done with impressionable children who lack the mental development, emotional maturity, and life experience to consider the long-term ramifications of the decisions being pushed on them, or full knowledge about the long-term effects of life-altering, physically transformative, and often-irreversible surgical and chemical procedures.
Studies find that more than 80% of children experiencing gender dysphoria outgrow it on their own by late adolescence, and that even full “reassignment” surgery often fails to resolve gender-confused individuals’ heightened tendency to engage in self-harm and suicide — and may even exacerbate it, including by reinforcing their confusion and neglecting the actual root causes of their mental strife.
Many oft-ignored “detransitioners,” individuals who attempted to live under a different “gender identity” before embracing their sex, attest to the physical and mental harm of reinforcing gender confusion, as well as to the bias and negligence of the medical establishment on the subject, many of whom take an activist approach to their profession and begin cases with a predetermined conclusion that “transitioning” is the best solution.
Some such physicians have also been caught on video admitting to more old-fashioned motives for such procedures, as with an exposé last year about Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Clinic for Transgender Health, where Dr. Shayne Sebold Taylor said outright that “these surgeries make a lot of money.”
“Chest reconstruction,” for instance, could mean $40,000 per patient, and vaginoplasties well over $20,000, she said. “These surgeries are labor intensive, there are a lot of follow-ups, they require a lot of our time, and they make money.” That story prompted a new Tennessee law that forced Vanderbilt to stop “transitioning” minors.