A California teen girl who once identified as transgender and took hormones and underwent surgery to affirm such an identity spoke out in favor of a Florida rule blocking Medicaid funds from paying for medical interventions for gender dysphoria.
“I really didn’t understand all of the ramifications of any of the medical decisions that I was making,” Chloe Cole, 17, said at a public hearing Friday. She said she was medically transitioned from ages 13 to 16, taking so-called puberty-blocking drugs and testosterone, and undergoing surgery to remove her breasts at age 15. “I was unknowingly physically cutting off my true self from my body, irreversibly and painfully.”
“I don’t know if I’ll be able to fully carry a child, and I might be at increased risk for certain cancers, mainly cervical cancer,” Cole said in a separate private meeting with Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo Friday, footage of which Ladapo posted on Twitter Sunday. “And because I do not have my breasts, … I am not able to breastfeed whatever future children I have.”
“That realization, actually, was one of the biggest things that led to me realizing that this was not the path that I should have taken,” Cole added.
“No child should have to experience what I have,” she concluded.
When asked what she would say to the public, Cole said, “Do not transition your kids.”
Watch:
Detransitioner-Chloe-Cole-speaks-at-Florida-Department-of-Health
“If you are considering transitioning, please wait until you are a fully developed adult,” Cole, whose Twitter handle is @ChoooCole, told Fox News Digital. “Transitioning can damage your body and mind in ways that we may not fully understand.”
Ladapo also warned against transgender medical interventions for children.
“Medicalization of minors with gender dysphoria might advance the political views of physicians involved in their care, but the data showing any benefits for the actual children is extraordinarily thin,” the surgeon general told Fox News Digital. “The affirmation model runs an unacceptably high risk of harm.”
Cole spoke in favor of Rule 59G-1.050, in which the Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA), would restrict Medicaid funding from transgender drugs and procedures. Under the rule, Florida Medicaid would not cover puberty blockers, hormones and hormone antagonists, sex reassignment surgeries, or “any other procedures that alter primary or secondary sexual characteristics” to treat gender dysphoria.
This is an excerpt from Fox News.
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