COLUMBUS, Ohio (LifeSiteNews) — A young woman came forward during a congressional hearing in Ohio on Tuesday to speak for the first time about her experience being victimized by transgender ideology. She said practitioners “affirmed” her gender confusion without addressing her underlying mental health issues, resulting in devastating, permanent effects.
“I had become captivated by the idea that my female body was fundamentally wrong, and seduced by the prospect that there was something I could do about it,” 26-year-old Morgan Keller said in testimony supporting Ohio’s HB 68, the Saving Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act.
The act, which has been passed by the Ohio House of Representatives, would protect minors from mutilating transgender drugs and surgeries.
“I come to you wearing the scars of this medical scandal”
Ohioan detransitioner Morgan Keller @in_detransit gives her riveting testimony publicly for the FIRST TIME in favor of Ohio HB 68 The SAFE Act. pic.twitter.com/4vTCJu1NU7
— Chloe Cole ⭐️ (@ChoooCole) November 28, 2023
In her testimony, Keller explained that she had identified as transgender while in an abusive lesbian relationship and a deep state of depression. Upon seeking professional help at the young age of 21, Keller said her gender-confusion was “affirmed” and she was put on cross-sex hormones “with minimal questioning or treatment of my underlying issues.”
Keller said the emphasis on gender transition was so strong that she was never presented with viable alternatives to feel better about herself and her body without undergoing life-altering drugs and surgeries.
“I feel like once I walked into that gender clinic, medicalization was the only option,” she said.
At just 22, she received a double mastectomy and was assured by practitioners that she would “transition beautifully” and ultimately be unrecognizable as a female.
“After a lifetime of body image issues and an increasing desperation to become anybody but myself, that was like music to my ears,” she said.
While she said she needed professionals that would help her “make peace with my body,” she was instead surrounded by practitioners who affirmed her “delusion that hormones and a cosmetic mastectomy might make me feel better.”
RELATED: Detransitioner suing gender clinic that pressured her into double mastectomy at age 16
Keller said her parents were convinced by practitioners that gender transition would prevent their daughter’s suicide. However, she said the drugs and surgeries have merely given her new mental and physical issues, leading her to reject the notion that such experimental interventions are “lifesaving” or helpful.
“When I realized that my medicalization was nothing more than a very elaborate placebo, endorsed by multiple medical professionals, I made the immediate decision to detransition,” she said.
The 26-year-old quit taking testosterone and endured four months of agony, grappling with the realization of the destruction she had been permitted to inflict upon her body. She came to the painful realization that she would never be able to breastfeed her own children, whom she “didn’t even know that I wanted at the time when I got my mastectomy,” and began making plans to end her own life.
Keller said she shared her deep regret with her therapist, who told her she had failed her. Her therapist reportedly said that practitioners are still figuring out how best to deal with gender dysphoria despite the loudly promoted “narrative” that clinical gender “transitioning” is “settled science.”
For Keller, the lack of thorough guidance before being set on a track of irreversible and devastating clinicalization meant that she was stripped of the ability to give informed consent.
“I couldn’t give informed consent at 21, so why are we pretending that children can do that?” she asked.
Concluding, she argued Ohio’s HB 68 will help make sure that “children in Ohio are protected from ever waking up and finding themselves in my position.”
“I wish I never opened up the Pandora’s box of gender ideology,” Keller said.
“I wish I had been told ‘no’ by the practitioners that I trusted. I wish I could say that I’m the exception to the rule, but everybody in this room knows that is false,” she continued. “I come to you wearing the scars of this medical scandal, asking you to please vote in support of House Bill 68 to protect Ohio’s children.”
RELATED: Medical advocacy group releases ‘Detransitioner Bill of Rights’ for states to resist gender ideology
As LifeSiteNews has reported, even prominent leaders in the transgender medical field have acknowledged that “social contagion” is a factor in rising numbers of trans identification among children and youth.
Minors across the country have been actively encouraged in the culture and their classrooms to adopt “transgender,” “gender fluid,” or “non-binary” identities, leading to a spike in transgender identification and subsequent surgical and chemical mutilation by “affirming” practitioners.
The permanent, life-altering interventions have been employed despite the fact that studies indicate that over 80% of children suffering from gender dysphoria will outgrow it on their own by late adolescence without obtaining permanent and debilitating surgical or pharmaceutical interventions.
As Keller noted in her testimony, the affirmation of gender delusion can have drastic consequences.
Some of the recorded harmful effects of transgender surgeries and drugs include the loss of ability to have biological children or breastfeed, as well as cardiovascular diseases, loss of bone density, cancer, strokes and blood clots, infertility, and suicidality.
Research published in March 2022 found that 82% of people who identify as transgender “have considered killing themselves and 40% have attempted suicide, with suicidality highest among transgender youth.”
And claims that destructive gender interventions will improve mental health are challenged by anecdotal stories like Keller’s as well as research.
As LifeSite has noted, a lengthy study by Richard Bränström, Ph.D., and John E. Pachankis, Ph.D. that appeared to support the theory that “gender-affirming care” improves mental health was later retracted. A 2020 correction found the “results demonstrated no advantage of surgery in relation to subsequent mood or anxiety disorder-related health care visits or prescriptions or hospitalizations following suicide attempts in that comparison.”