Detransitioner Isabelle Ayala detailed Thursday how she was able to receive cross-sex hormone therapy, claiming her parents were pressured by her doctor to accept the transitional therapy.
Ayala appeared on the “Megyn Kelly Show” to discuss how she had sought to transition from female to male at 14 years old, only to later reverse the process three years later. Ayala said that she had met with a few different people, including the chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics’s LGBTQ+ Health and Wellness Committee Dr. Jason Rafferty, for only 45 minutes before being diagnosed with gender dysphoria.
Ayala said even before her first meeting with Rafferty she noticed how the trans community instructed people, including herself, what to say and do to receive hormone treatments. (RELATED: Here’s How The Medical Industry Is Keeping Detransitioners From Getting Crucial Care)
“You were spiraling emotionally and saying that you were suicidal,” Kelly said, referring to Ayala’s state before the hormone treatments.
“Yes, but at that time that wasn’t true. It was kind of like what I read online,” Ayala responded. “Like you’re going to need to push and make people [see] the gravity of the situation if you want to get what you want in terms of hormones. And that can mean lying. That is a thing I definitely see encouraged, even nowadays, in the trans community.”
“I met with a few different people – his nurse practitioner, and then him,” Ayala continued. “He basically sat me down and kind of asked me questions about my history. I was a young kid at the time – nowhere near ready to address the deep trauma that I’d been through. So I kinda just told him, ‘Yeah, I don’t like my body, I’m uncomfortable with my breasts and female sex organs. And that was enough for him to diagnose me with gender dysphoria.”
Kelly asked Ayala if she felt like Rafferty’s “guinea pig” after she found out the doctor was one of the lead authors for the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) 2018 study on using hormone medical treatments.
“Definitely,” Ayala said. “Like you’re telling me you didn’t even know half of what you were doing. That you were actively writing out, ‘Oh this might be what’s right’ actively while I am spiraling in real time as I am on testosterone. I end[ed] up actually getting hospitalized for a suicide attempt later that year.”
“So you go home, I gather it was on that visit or the second visit he prescribes testosterone. And this is like serious. It’s a needle, right, that you have to inject?” Kelly questioned.
“They were supporting me the best they could,” Ayala said. “They were under the impression that these professionals that are well-esteemed, have gone to school, and are supposed to be the experts on this are telling [them] ‘we need to do this for our kid or our kid is going to die.’ So they were trying to be as supportive as they could at the time to me.”
Ayala later went on to describe how the hormone treatments heavily affected her body and noted that she had been on the hormones for an “extended period of time.” The Rhode Island resident continued to state that her treatments with Rafferty never stopped, even after she was hospitalized for an attempted suicide.
Since her detransition, Ayala filed a lawsuit against the AAP and claims that before receiving hormone treatments, doctors overlooked her prior diagnoses of autism, ADHD, PTSD, anxiety disorder, bipolar disorder and depression, according to the New York Post.