A detransitioner filed the first lawsuit in Canada against her medical providers for facilitating her transition.
Michelle Zacchigna, a 34-year-old woman from Orilla, Ontario, filed a lawsuit against eight doctors and mental health providers who facilitated her hormone therapy, bilateral mastectomy, and even a hysterectomy.
Zacchigna alleges that the providers did not adequately address her mental health needs, instead allowing her to self-diagnose and then undergo irreversible procedures. The Statement of Claim, which was filed to the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, documents the timeline of the medical interventions and procedures that Zacchigna underwent after she began pursuing medical transition in 2010.
The Statement of Claim also notes that “The Defendants permitted Michelle to self-diagnose as transgender and prescribe her own treatment without providing a differential diagnosis or proposing alternative treatments.”
That same year, she met a doctor at a Toronto Support group called “Gender Journeys.” After just one appointment, the doctor referred Zacchigna for male hormone therapy. Meanwhile, her usual therapist also recommended hormone therapy despite being aware of her long term mental health issues. Zacchigna was prescribed hormones after three visits with another doctor.
Zacchigna underwent a bilateral mastectomy in 2012 after receiving a letter from her doctors recommending the procedure. She also underwent a hysterectomy in 2017, also after receiving a letter of recommendation for a doctor. Zacchigna eventually decided to detransition two years later in 2019.
Much of the medical profession operates under the affirmative model of care, which posits that those who claim to be the opposite sex should be affirmed in their identity by medical and healthcare professionals, and that the corresponding medical interventions should also affirm and encourage this identity.
Zacchigna discussed the role that social media had in encouraging her transition, writing “Online, I was sucked into a world where it felt like I was finally somewhere I belonged. In places like Tumblr, there was constant reassurance that … every trans person has doubts about transitioning.”
“These reassurances kept me on the path towards permanently altering my body, and the medical professionals I saw never questioned me,” she added.
She also explained the consequences of hormone therapy and the operations she underwent, writing in a blog post that “I will live the rest of my life without breasts, with a deepened voice and male-pattern balding, and without the ability to get pregnant. Removing my completely healthy uterus is my greatest regret.”
She also explained her experience in the same blog post, saying, “It became obvious that transition was not the panacea it is treated as. My relationship to gender and to my body has many nuances. And with that knowledge came the awful realization that everything I’d done to myself over the past decade was for nothing but a false belief.”
Zacchigna added that there are likely “thousands of others going through the same thing.”
Spencer Lindquist is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SpencerLndqst and reach out at slindquist@breitbart.com.
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