Last month, a twenty-two-year-old woman named Fox Varian won a lawsuit against her prior doctors who coaxed her into getting “top surgery” (a double mastectomy) when she was sixteen so that she could “live” as a boy. The surgery ultimately left her physically scarred and “deeply unhappy,” according to the New York Post. This lawsuit represents a major victory for opponents of prepubescent sex change treatments, especially parents, who are often pressured into complying.
This case has been described as a “landmark” lawsuit. It marks the first time any de-transitioner has successfully sued physicians for medical malpractice and won. Those of us who believe that protecting the dignity of the human person extends to treating gender dysphoria as a mental illness rather than a case of “born in the wrong body” are cheering, no doubt.
But festina lente—make haste slowly. These cheers are the same ones we heard when Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022—cheers so loud, they drowned out the voices of those asking: “Are we prepared for what comes next?” Now, Illinois, New York, and California must contend with the pro-life movement’s inability to answer that question.
Let’s not make the same mistake twice.
In 2024, Ohio and Missouri passed versions of the ACLU’s supposedly abortion-specific ballot referendum—except they weren’t abortion-specific. This same amendment is now in play in Virginia and is sure to be introduced in numerous other states over the next few months, where it will usher in language that makes “reproductive freedom” a constitutional right—a right that encompasses “infinite subjects,” according to Mary Catherine Martin, an attorney with the Thomas More Society, potentially superseding even our freedoms of speech and religion.
Notably, one of the key groups that’s sure to be impacted by this is parents of minor children—specifically, minor children who want to exercise their right to “reproductive freedom.” In most cases, this will refer to a minor girl’s decision to use birth control or to abort her unborn child. In some cases, however, this new “right” will be cited to justify minor girls’ double mastectomies without parental consent or knowledge.
I believe my state, Illinois, is laying the groundwork to introduce such an amendment. For starters, key legislators have begun speaking about abortion and “gender-affirming care” inseparably—as though they’re two sides of the same coin. Our governor, JB Pritzker, has both a personal and family history when it comes to both abortion and sex-change treatments. Not only has he implemented numerous laws and policies during his time as governor that fund, advance, and protect all of the above, his first cousin, “Jennifer,” is one of the most high-profile men in the world publicly living as a woman (short, perhaps, of Bruce Jenner). In June 2016, “Jennifer” made a $500,000 donation to Lurie Children’s Hospital’s Gender and Sex Development Program. And while it’s true that the program currently has treatments on hold as they await deliberation on an executive order by the Trump administration, Congress is not taking matters into their own hands. A federal ban on transitioning minors that passed through the House in late 2025 is currently dormant in the Senate. That is to say, a majority of elected officials put in Washington by the American people seemingly do not agree that this should be against the law.
As Christians concerned with protecting the dignity of the human person, we cannot proceed under the assumption that science—real, actual science that is evidence-based and not results-driven—is given any credence at all when it comes to policymaking. The reality is such that as long as deep pockets continue to fund bizarre public campaigns to gray the most basic and necessary lines of human existence—including the very basic and necessary line between the male and female sexes—our culture will continue to follow suit.
Since 2017, the number of national cases of children seeking sex transition treatments in some form (whether medicinal or surgical) has more than doubled. Here in the U.S., the sad fact is that where there is a demand, a supply will crop up. Perhaps even more important is one critical detail: The vast majority of these cases are girls. Malpractice suits cannot sufficiently address the root cause of young girls experiencing gender dysphoria—which largely stems from what Jonathan Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation, describes as “peer contagion,” the spread of behaviors within peer groups over social media.
That’s not going to change because one brave trailblazer successfully sued her doctor.
