WATCH: Detransitioner to providers: “Please just stop” gender surgeries on minors

By Carleen Johnson
The Center Square

A detransitioner is sharing her story with The Center Square and speaking out in strong support of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy series of regulatory actions designed to block access to gender altering drugs and surgical procedures for minors.

The announcement marked the most significant move the Trump administration has taken so far restrict puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgical interventions for children who identify as transgender.

HHS will cut off federal Medicaid and Medicare funding from hospitals and providers that offer gender-affirming care to children and prohibit federal Medicaid dollars from being used to fund such procedures.

“This is not medicine, it is malpractice,” HHS Secretary Kennedy said of gender-affirming procedures.

Soren Aldaco who lives in Texas, began identifying as transgender at age 11.

After reuniting with her biological father and stepmom a few years later, and still suffering gender dysphoria, her stepmom introduced her to a nurse practitioner at a support group.

“I believe that everybody in my life was doing what they thought was best at the time,” Aldaco said. “But I now understand my stepmom and my biological father who had just come into my life, they probably felt a lot of guilt for not being in my life up until that point.”

She explained they were taking her to healthcare professionals who began prescribing powerful drugs to the then 17-year-old without her mother’s knowledge or permission.

“In June of 2021 I had the double mastectomy and just six months after that, I stopped everything that I could,” Aldaco said.

She explained there were complications almost immediately after surgery.

“I noticed bruising through the top of my medical binder. And that’s when we reached out to their advice line and we’re telling them, there’s some bruising that seems abnormal, Aldaco said.

She said the surgery was drainless, meaning there were no drain tubes put in during the procedure, which is common for transgender patients. However, having nowhere for blood and fluid to drain can lead to very serious complications.

“A lot of the appeal, from what I understand, from my time in the community around that surgery was it’s a little bit more straightforward from the aesthetic standpoint,” she said. “Because you get to go in as this this guy with boobs and then you get the boobs taken off and you eventually take off the chest binder, the medical binder and bam, your chest is flat and it looks great.”

Despite Aldaco’s experience, a September 2024 National Library of Medicine report, “No-drain placement was not associated with increased postoperative complications.”

“It takes away all the real things that make you sit with the fact this is an invasive medical procedure, which would be the drains and the blood and the gore,” Aldaco said. “And you can just be a pretty boy. You can just take off the medical binder and be a pretty boy, and there’s no holes that the tubes are coming out of sticking out of your chest.”

She explained the lack of drains led to blood and other fluids pooling around her hips. She developed a fever and ended up having an emergency procedure to drain the fluid, which had also pooled in her chest wall.

Six months later she began to detransition. Doctors have said it’s unclear if she will be able to carry a child.

Aldaco is convinced many providers and hospitals have promoted gender surgeries on minors because of the money involved.

“I do think the money is a huge, huge, huge, huge component, because the fact that we’ve become lifelong patients after engaging with transgender medical care. I still have complications to this day, especially gynecologically,” Aldaco said. “I don’t think every single person is sitting there plotting to mutilate kids. But I do think we live in a society that’s motivated by bad actors.”

Thursday’s HHS announcement puts into question funding for at least two dozen states, including Washington where gender care for minors continues.

Seattle Children’s Hospital gender clinic this year halted, reinstated and again halted gender surgeries for minors, awaiting final court rulings on Trump’s early year executive order banning such procedures on those under 18.

Seattle Children’s did not respond to an emailed request for comment.

The Center Square also reached out to the Seattle based Gender Justice League (JGL) whose Executive Director Danni Askini said back in July their organization had helped 190 individuals up to that point in 2025.

“What we hear is a sense of panic and alarm, of terror, that they are being targeted specifically by this administration and policymakers around the country for differential treatment,” Askini said. “There are millions and millions of Americans who would understand how terrifying that is for the government to have that power over people’s lives and their agency and decision-making.”

GJL did not respond for comment on this article.

Washington Attorney General Nick Brown posted on Instagram Thursday afternoon that the proposed HHS rules are “cruel and unnecessary.”

The proposals just announced must still undergo rulemaking and are likely to face further legal challenges.

Aldaco urged providers to stop encouraging young children to transition.

“I would just say stop now…..we’re all imperfect and we all make mistakes,” she said. “But you can’t run away from those mistakes forever. You have to really sit with the fact that, like, sometimes you mess up and sometimes you have to own that. And that’s what I think these providers need to do, is they need to stop now and they need to turn and they need to face that shadow.”