Chloe Cole, a well-known activist who opposes gender transition surgeries and treatments for minors and supports banning the practices following her own detransition, testified before the Wyoming Legislature on Wednesday.
She was there to support Wyoming’s Chloe’s Law legislation, the second go-round of a bill named for Cole that would ban transgender surgeries and treatments on minors in the state, proposed by state Sen. Anthony Bouchard, R-Cheyenne.
Cole said Wyoming needs to take a stand against the medical industry, which largely supports some form of gender transition treatments on minors.
“I came here today as an early warning to the state of Wyoming,” she told the Senate Labor, Health and Social Services Committee. “I am a victim of this gender ideology that has been spread across the country through the internet.”
Chloe’s Law — Children Gender Change Prohibition would prohibit doctors in Wyoming from performing gender transitioning on minors younger than 18. Under Chloe’s Law, a physician, surgeon or pharmacist could lose their license for performing a transgender surgery on a minor.
The bill, Senate File 99, passed the committee Wednesday morning unanimously by members Sens. Bouchard; Eric Barlow, R-Gillette; Lynn Hutchings, R-Cheyenne; Dan Dockstader, R-Afton; and Fred Baldwin, R-Kemmerer.
Cole is the second detransitioner to testify for Wyoming legislators. Last year, Luka Hein, a detransitioner who regrets taking hormones and having surgery as a teenager, testified for the 2023 version of Chloe’s Law, which failed.
Chloe’s Story
Cole, 19, was raised in rural California, and around the age of 12, started feeling a desire to identify as a boy. Experiencing loneliness, boredom and early puberty, Cole told the committee that she turned to the internet for answers and started calling herself “Leo.”
She told Cowboy State Daily the medical advice she and her parents received around this time was that medically transitioning to solve her gender dysphoria was her only option to avoid the risk of suicide, something Cole said she hadn’t contemplated before.
“I was not at risk of suicide at all,” Cole said. “So, my mom and dad, they were lied to, they were manipulated, and they deserve better.”
Cole said she sees many similarities between the way her family was treated and the experiences of others.
By the age of 13 she was receiving puberty blockers and cross-hormones. Because she was already four years into puberty, Cole said she went into artificially induced menopause.
“That’s no state for any 13-year-old girl to be in,” she told the committee.
At age 15 she had a double mastectomy.
Within less than a year after her surgery, Cole said she began detransitioning back to being a girl. Cole said even after she stopped taking puberty blockers for a year, she was still feeling their effects.
“They’re not reversible, not a single part of this has been,” she said.
Four years later, Cole said she’s still dealing with the permanent side effects from her transition.
Her voice is still masculine, she experiences joint and spinal pain, atrophy in her reproductive glands, and leaking fluid from where she had nipple grafts.
“I didn’t deserve this,” Cole said. “No child in Wyoming deserves to be put through these cruelties or hardships.”
Political Hot Potato
During her testimony Wednesday, Cole said she doesn’t believe the issue of whether children should be allowed to get gender reassignment treatments should be a political football.
But Cole has become a symbol of a conservative movement to restrict these treatments legislatively. She dedicates her time to traveling around the country and sharing her experience with others.
When asked by Cowboy State Daily about becoming a public face for the issue, Cole said she has no regrets.
“It’s something that I’ve been proud to undertake and it’s something that has given me a lot of hope, this journey of speaking out,” Cole said. “It’s given me a purpose, especially as I meet a lot of these other men, women who have been affected by this.”
How Representative?
Cole is among a small percentage of people who have transgender treatments to detransition, and an even smaller group to openly speak against gender treatments for children.
She told Cowboy State Daily that even if situations like hers are isolated, it’s still a procedure that should be opposed for children.
“If it’s not happening, what harm does it do to protect children from these procedures?” she questioned. “Especially if it’s against the standards of care of some major organization?”
She believes there is never a situation where a child should have these treatments.
“You’re taking away from a child’s greatest right — to grow up healthy, with their body fully intact, and as adults live life to the fullest,” Cole said. “I don’t think there’s any rush to be doing these procedures in children.
“That’s too much to ask a child, and no adult has any right to do this to any child, whether it be a parent, a doctor, a counselor, anyone.”
The Pushback
Many who spoke against Chloe’s Law on Wednesday expressed concern for the mental health and safety of transgender youth.
Antonio Serrano, ACLU of Wyoming advocacy director, mentioned how a 2020 Trevor Project study found that 54% of people who identify as transgender or nonbinary reported seriously considering suicide in the past year and 29% attempted it.
According to the Wyoming Department of Health, from 2010-2020 the state suicide rate among 15- to 19-year-olds was more than double the national average for that age group.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the American Medical Association say transition care should be available to minors if needed and oppose legislative bans, but only the AAP opposes surgical treatments for minors.
A number of Wyoming-based medical professionals testified Wednesday against Chloe’s Law.
There is no evidence a gender-changing surgery has ever been performed in Wyoming on anyone.
“This bill was crafted based on outside influence and outside experiences for a state that has not experienced that and is not set up to experience that,” said Dr. Michael Sanderson, a Sheridan pediatrician.
The crux of Wednesday’s discussion came down to the question of whether legislators should defer to or confer with the judgment of medical professionals on the issue of gender transition treatments, or make their own decisions on their impacts.
Sanderson offered some of the most direct criticism.
“I am deeply concerned with the tone and interest that the Wyoming Legislature seems to have in stepping between Wyoming citizens and their doctors, and it seems to be an increasing trend over time,” Sanderson said. “This is highly inappropriate, and it is dangerous. Every time that you do this, you send a message to Wyoming citizens that you know better what they need than they do and their doctors do.”
Sara Burlingame, executive director of LGBTQ advocacy organization Wyoming Equality, said although her group opposes children having transgender surgeries, it worries that SF 99 will embolden people to bully and harass transgender youth and their families.
She also believes it discriminates against people from seeking the health care they desire.
Bouchard made an allegation that one of the biggest reasons medical professionals support these treatments is because of the money they believe they can make from them, a point Sanderson firmly disputed.
“Wyoming doctors practice according to the highest ethical ideals and the best evidence,” Sanderson said.
Right To Sue
On Wednesday, the Labor Committee also passed on a 5-0 vote legislation brought by Bouchard extending the statute of limitations for causes of action for gender transition services performed on minors.
Cole, who is now engaged in a lawsuit of her own in California over this exact action, also spoke in support of Senate File 98.
“The statute of limitations needs to be expanded,” she said. “Many of my friends who have detransitioned cannot sue because of the statute of limitations throughout the states. Wyoming needs to act early and become a safe haven for detransitioners.”
Currently, Wyoming’s statute of limitations expires after two years. SF 98 would extend the right for someone in Wyoming to seek legal action against a physician that provided them gender transition services as a minor up to the age of 21.
Although Burlingame said there were elements of this bill that her organization supports, her group still opposes it as a whole.
“It appears that some of the debate on this is political and ideological in nature, and is not based on the most thoughtful consideration of how to serve youth and their medical care needs in our state,” she said.
Leo Wolfson can be reached at leo@cowboystatedaily.com.
