by Wesley J Smith, National Review
The first gender “detransitioner” medical-malpractice case to go to trial resulted in a $2 million dollar verdict against the medical professionals who approved a double mastectomy for the plaintiff, Fox Varian, in 2019 when she was only 16. From the Epoch Times story:
A jury on Jan. 30 found a psychologist and surgeon liable for malpractice after they supported and performed breast removal surgery on a 16-year-old girl who at the time identified as transgender.
Fox Varian, now 22 and no longer identifying as transgender, was awarded $2 million in damages, with $1.6 million for past and future pain and suffering, and another $400,000 for future medical expenses.
The jury found that in many respects the surgeon and psychologist had skipped important steps when evaluating whether she should go forward with the surgery and had not adequately communicated with each other. These missteps were a “departure from the standard of care,” they decided.
Just as in Chloe Cole’s medical malpractice case — which has yet to be litigated — adults feared Fox would commit suicide:
Read also: The First Verdict Has Landed in the Pediatric Gender Medicine Scandal by Gerald Posner – After years of regulatory failure, the civil justice system delivers a warning shot that could reshape an entire medical industry.
Ethics and Public Theology Professor Andrew T Walker comments on X:
Christians and conservatives were right about transgender ideology from the start. What was dismissed as alarmism is now revealing itself as human tragedy, institutional chaos, and irreversible harm.
There is a moral lesson here: some errors announce their consequences immediately, while others take time to reveal the bitter fruits and costly consequences of living outside the guardrails of reality.
But because Christianity is grounded in reality and thus in truth, every serious Christian moral claim about ways a society departs from the created order will, sooner or later, be vindicated—often at a terrible cost to those who were told those warnings from Christians were cruel rather than compassionate.
God, have mercy on those our society is destroying in the name of inclusion, autonomy, tolerance, and toxic empathy.