‘I want my breasts back’: Former transgender clinic employee remembers the horrors of the ‘gender-affirming care’ she once believed in

Lies are most effective when they sound like the truth. And gender-affirming doctors have their lies tailored to perfection, according to one insider.

“Research shows that when transgender kids receive support that upholds their gender identity, they have better mental health,” claims St. Louis Children’s Hospital’s Transgender Center. “Not receiving that support puts their physical and mental health at risk.”

Sounds plausible, doesn’t it? That’s what makes it so persuasive – and so dangerous, critics warn.

Jamie Reed worked at the Transgender Center for four years. She is married to a transgender man, describes herself as “a queer woman, and politically to the left of Bernie Sanders.”

But her experience at the Transgender Center convinced her they were “permanently harming the vulnerable patients in our care.”

Reed even sent a letter to Missouri’s Attorney General, knowing full-well the personal and professional risks of blowing the whistle will be high. 

She’s doing it anyway “because what is happening to scores of children is far more important than my comfort. And what is happening to them is morally and medically appalling,” she writes in an editorial for The Free Press.   

In just four years, patient calls into the clinic which might permanently alter their bodies increased fivefold. 

“When I started there were probably 10 such calls a month,” she says. “When I left there were 50.” 

Many female patients were already struggling with depression, anxiety, ADHD, eating disorders, obesity, or autism. Psychiatric patients with severe diagnoses such as schizophrenia, PTSD, and bipolar disorder were referred. Some patients were also convinced they had additional diseases the center recognized as false-diagnoses due to “social contagion.”  

Not so with gender identity struggles. 

“Yet no matter how much suffering or pain a child had endured,” writes Reed, “our doctors viewed gender transition – even with all the expense and hardship it entailed – as the solution. 

But patients seldom understood the major, irreversible health effects of cross-sex treatment, even for nearly guaranteed hormone therapy, which causes sterility. 

“I came to believe that teenagers are simply not capable of fully grasping what it means to make the decision to become infertile while still a minor,” Reed writes.  

She remembers a girl who called the surgeon’s office just three months after having a double mastectomy. The patient announced she was detransitioning to her birth name and pronouns. She told the nurse, “I want my breasts back.” 

Reed found out the girl was pregnant and of course would never be able to breastfeed her child.  

Even without surgery, “gender affirming care” has horrific side effects. One boy experienced liver toxicity. Some girls – whose testosterone prescription thins their vaginal tissue – had vaginal lacerations. In another case, testosterone enlarged the patient’s clitoris, so Reed recommended she wear compression undergarments – commonly used by men trying to pass as female. 

Detransitioners often refer to the consequences as a “medical leash,” the inescapable dependence on drugs.  

“I doubt that any parent who’s ever consented to give their kid testosterone (a lifelong treatment) knows that they’re also possibly signing their kid up for blood pressure medication, cholesterol medication, and perhaps sleep apnea and diabetes,” says Reed.  

After a teenage boy who sexually abused animals was prescribed hormones, Reed even wondered if doctors were using their “care” as a form of chemical castration.  

Now that she’s escaped the Transgender Center, Reed is appalled by what they do.  

“There are rare conditions in which babies are born with atypical genitalia,” she writes. “But clinics like the ones where I worked are creating a whole cohort of kids with atypical genitals – and most of these teens haven’t even had sex yet. 

“They had no idea who they were going to be as adults.”

What about the adults – the parents – who were supposed to be looking after these kids?  

Doctors decided their opinion didn’t matter.  

Reed saw firsthand how a doctor’s testimony swayed a judge to grant a mother custody of her child simply because the father didn’t want the girl to have cross-sex treatment. According to Reed’s account, the daughter didn’t have symptoms of gender dysphoria until the mother became convinced her child was transgender. 

It disturbed Reed to see the center’s “lack of regard for the rights of parents – and the extent to which doctors saw themselves as more informed decision-makers over the fate of these children.” 

But when she raised concerns with the center’s leadership, she suddenly started receiving poor performance reviews. One administrator even told her “get on board, or get out.”  

When The Lion asked a St. Louis Children’s Hospital representative if the hospital wanted to comment on the allegations of medical negligence, the representative promptly hung up. 

Eventually, Reed got a new job, but the malpractices she witnessed still haunt her. As a mother and a medical professional, she is convinced it must stop. 

“I believe that to ensure the safety of American children, we need a moratorium on the hormonal and surgical treatment of young people with gender dysphoria,” she concludes.  

Some Missouri lawmakers, including Missouri Senate president Caleb Rowden, R-District 19, have publicly indicated an intention to do just that in the current legislative session.

Missouri’s senior U.S. senator, Josh Hawley, promised to launch an investigation into the transgender center where Reed worked.

“This is a sickening account of forced sterilization and child abuse,” Hawley wrote on Thursday. “Happening in Missouri at an institution that receives federal taxpayer funds. Today my office is launching an investigation. Missouri children deserve to be protected.”