Double Mastectomy, Uterus Removed: Ontario Woman Files Lawsuit Against Doctors Who Helped Her Gender Transition

The Ontario Superior Court building is seen in Toronto on Jan. 29, 2020. The Canadian Press/Colin Perkel

An Ontario woman who identified as a man for 10 years and had a double mastectomy and partial hysterectomy, has filed what appears to be the first lawsuit of its kind in Canada against the doctors who helped her obtain the irreversible medical procedures involved in transitioning to male.

Michelle Zacchigna, 34, from Orillia, Ont., filed legal action in Ontario Superior Court against eight health care providers, alleging that while she was in her 20s, various doctors and mental health care professionals permitted her to “self-diagnose as transgender and prescribe her own treatment without providing a differential diagnosis or proposing alternative treatments.”

On Feb. 21, Zacchigna tweeted that while deciding whether to take legal action, a friend told her that her lawsuit “wasn’t about winning or losing, but making the leviathan that is the gender affirmation industry realize it can bleed.”

Her gender exploration path began in 2009 when at 21 years old, she left a “controlling relationship” and started questioning her gender. She said she had spent years dealing with depression, anxiety, self-harm, and a suicide attempt, and then stumbled into an online community about “gender identity.”

In a blog entry, she said it took less than a year and a half for her to go from questioning her gender to starting testosterone injections. The hormones changed her voice permanently.

Zacchigna went to Florida and paid for both her breasts to be removed in 2012. Her Canadian doctors, she alleges, wrote her the recommendation letter.

In 2017, seven years after being prescribed hormones, she had a psychoeducational assessment and says she was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, ADHD, and major depressive disorder.

Despite the diagnosis, one year later, she underwent a partial hysterectomy, having her uterus cut out, but keeping her ovaries, paid for by her Ontario health coverage.

By 2019, she says she regretted all of the procedures, which are irreversible.

Regrets

Zacchigna said she had always wanted children but nevertheless went ahead with the partial hysterectomy in 2018.

“I wasn’t in a great place mentally at the time, so I can’t really remember why I thought it was a good idea except that, for trans people, it was covered by provincial insurance, and I liked the idea of not having any more periods or pap exams,” she wrote.

Even after a decade, she says, “acknowledging that I cannot bear my own children has been devastating.”

“Some days, the pain of what I’ve done to myself is overwhelming. I cry and I can’t stop,” she wrote.

She said she is angry that she was prescribed hormones instead of being diagnosed and treated for her mental health challenges.

“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 wrote in a blog entry on Feb. 13.

Zacchigna created a crowdfunding campaign on GiveSendGo to tell her story and said that while her lawyer is representing her on a contingency fee agreement, the money raised will cover out-of-pocket expenses, such as obtaining records and hiring experts.

Detransition

Zacchigna said she started transitioning back to female in November 2020, after realizing she was suffering from mental health issues and “developmental trauma” stemming from severe bullying during childhood.

She said filing the lawsuit has sparked criticism from some who say she needs to take “personal responsibility” for her decision to transition, particularly because she was an adult when she underwent the medical procedures.

In a blog post titled, “Actually, I was just crazy the whole time,” she describes having a “delusional belief” at the time that she “was not a woman and was somehow a man instead.”

“I brought that belief to health professionals who had been taught that it was kinder to affirm the belief than to question it. As a result, I was prescribed cross-sex hormones which caused irreversible changes to my body, and with my belief affirmed, I continued further, having surgeries that disconnected me even further from the reality of my femaleness,” she said.

“I may have been delusional, but coming to the wrong conclusion was still my mistake. I have the responsibility of figuring out how I was able to make such a massive mistake,” she added.

Zacchigna alleges it was medical negligence for her doctors “to have failed to properly investigate my delusional belief.”

“It is clear that the health professionals who facilitated my transition had their own responsibility towards me,” she said.

Zacchigna suggests the physicians should have offered her therapy, instead of accepting her beliefs at face value.

The Canadian Gender Report tweeted on Feb. 21 that Zacchigna’s is the first lawsuit of its kind in Canada, launched by a “detransitioner seeking justice and raising awareness of the reckless nature of unquestioned gender-affirmation medicalization.”

The Epoch Times contacted some of the physicians named in the action for comment but did not receive a reply by press time.