It was supposed to bring relief. It was supposed to prevent tragedy. It was supposed to be what was best for the child. Those, at least, were the promises offered to families navigating one of the most frightening situations imaginable: a teenager in psychological distress; a medical system insisting that surgically removing healthy body parts was the responsible path forward; and those same children later coming to regret what had been done to them.
Over the last several years, many of these victims have been suing the people who led them down what felt like a one-way street. Unlike most other medical procedures, when it came to so-called “gender transitions,” caution was dispensed with, no alternatives were meaningfully explored, and fear was doing most of the persuading.
Fox Varian sadly lived through such a tragedy. But a jury recently awarded her $2 million in a malpractice verdict tied to a double mastectomy she underwent at 16—a surgery that never should have happened. Her case is now being described as a landmark, not just for what it says about her own experience, but for what it may signal about a wave of legal scrutiny still to come.
What happened to Fox Varian?
As chronicled by The Free Press, Fox had a rough childhood. She dealt with a years-long custody battle between her parents when she was just 7. Furthermore, she also suffered from a number of personal issues, such as depression, anxiety, and social phobia.
Fox also had been diagnosed with autism and found herself bouncing from school to school. These issues came to a head when, at 15, Fox began to question her sex. As a 15-year-old, Fox cut her hair short and began binding her breasts. She also changed her name and began telling people she was a boy.
In December 2019, when she was just 16, Fox underwent a double mastectomy to remove her breasts. Very soon after, she regretted the life-altering surgery.
“I immediately had a thought that this was wrong, and it couldn’t be true,” Fox told The Epoch Times.
She added: “I felt shame. It’s hard to face that you are disfigured for life.”
Fox’s mother also opposed the procedure, but she ultimately consented out of fear that without the surgery, her daughter would commit suicide. This fear was only exacerbated by psychologist Kenneth Einhorn.
(Einhorn, surgeon Dr. Simon Chin, and their respective employers were all named in the suit.)
A jury sides with Fox Varian
According to The Epoch Times, a jury in White Plains, New York, ruled on Jan. 30 that Einhorn and Chin committed medical malpractice by approving and performing a double mastectomy on 16-year-old Fox. The verdict found both professionals legally responsible for violating the standard of care, including by failure to obtain meaningful, informed consent to perform the surgery.
Of note, the trial revealed that neither Einhorn nor Chin had a full grasp of Fox’s psychological struggles when they plowed ahead with the surgery.
Einhorn had written a referral letter to Chin in October 2019, recommending that Fox go through with the chest surgery. However, before the surgery, Fox told staff at the Albany Pride Center that she “felt pressure” from “family, friends, and culture.” She also presented further questions about the entire ordeal.
Had Einhorn and Chin known of these reservations, they claim, they would not have plowed ahead with Fox’s surgery.
But they plowed ahead anyway, despite the obvious red flags. Because of this, Fox’s legal team would ultimately describe Einhorn’s attitude as “Whatever the kid wants, the kid gets.”
Fox is now 22 and no longer identifies as a boy. The jury awarded her $2 million in damages, including $1.6 million to compensate for past and future pain and suffering, along with an additional $400,000 earmarked for future medical costs.
Jurors concluded that the two providers failed in multiple key areas before proceeding with such an irreversible operation. Those failures, the jury said, amounted to a clear departure from accepted medical standards of care.
ADF stands alongside detransitioners seeking justice
As independent reporter Benjamin Ryan chronicles, the Fox Varian lawsuit was the first detransitioner medical malpractice case to go to trial. That alone makes it noteworthy and historic.
But Fox’s lawsuit is hardly unique. As Ryan also notes, there are dozens of similar malpractice lawsuits throughout the country. Fox’s case is the first to go to trial and the first to win a jury verdict, but it could have far-reaching consequences in terms of the other cases and detransitioners seeking justice.
That could include detransitioners like Prisha Mosley and Laura Becker.
- Prisha had a rough childhood. She suffered all sorts of catastrophic events, like being sexually assaulted, becoming pregnant, and suffering a miscarriage. She also suffered from an eating disorder and depression. These traumatic experiences eventually culminated with medical professionals deciding that she was struggling with a “gender identity crisis”—after just one visit. After a doctor removed Prisha’s healthy breasts at age 18, she swiftly realized that things were not right, or even better. A deeper voice, a body in almost constant pain and her breasts permanently gone, she realized she had been lied to by those she had trusted for care for her health. Thankfully, she’s now fully embraced who she is as a woman. Campbell Miller Payne, PLLC filed a lawsuit on Prisha’s behalf in July 2023.
- Like Prisha, Laura struggled through her adolescence. She was diagnosed with autism, suffered from depression, and endured psychological and emotional abuse from her father. Her teenage years weren’t any better, as her depression worsened and she self-medicated with drugs. Laura spoke to ADF about her own detransition journey, and it painted a familiar portrait of regret after doctors removed her healthy breasts at the age of 20. “I will never have breasts. I will never have a normal female body. I will never breastfeed. … So that’s a devastating grief that I live with every time I look in the mirror,” Laura told ADF, further adding, “I wish young people knew that puberty isn’t a disease, that growing up is necessary for happiness … Trying to be the opposite sex just isn’t going to work.”
Gender ideology harms—not helps—young people like Fox Varian
As the New York jury’s verdict demonstrated, the tide appears to be turning on the idea of subjecting young, confused children to harmful, irreversible surgeries. And frankly, it’s long overdue.
A report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found a lack of strong evidence that these dangerous and often irreversible procedures are beneficial. For something sold as “life-saving,” the data simply doesn’t support that and certainly doesn’t carry the moral weight being placed on it. When the supposed benefits are speculative or contested at best—and the harms are permanent, visible, and inescapable—calling this “settled” science stops being persuasion and starts looking like malpractice by another name.
There are good reasons this issue is fraught with ethical red flags. Removing healthy body parts from young people is not a neutral act, and it is not a reversible one. What does it say that most children can’t be trusted to pick out the food they put in their bodies everyday, yet can supposedly be trusted to “consent” to irreversible surgeries that remove healthy body parts? More so, what does it say about this “consent” if it is given by minors and parents under threat of potential suicide?
For both questions, the answer is nothing good.
At some point, reality has to matter more than rhetoric. There is still no credible evidence that these surgeries provide durable mental health benefits for children, while the physical and psychological harms are obvious, permanent, and well-documented. You simply don’t amputate healthy body parts on the basis of wishful thinking, activist pressure, or slogans about being “life-saving.”
When the best defense of a harmful, irreversible surgery is hope, anecdotes, and social pressure, the honest conclusion is that it never should have been offered in the first place.
That’s why 27 states have moved to ban these drugs and surgeries for minors—and why more likely will. Not because of “fear” or “bigotry,” but because the science is flimsy, while the damage is not. Parents and children should never be pressured into irreversible medical decisions that offer no proven benefit and guarantee lifelong consequences.
If medicine still means “first, do no harm,” then this should be simple: these procedures shouldn’t be pushed, shouldn’t be marketed, and shouldn’t be considered medical care at all.
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