Former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly has expressed contrition for having once supported transgender ideology.
Having interviewed Isabelle Ayala, a 21 year old detransitioner first took cross-sex hormones at 14, and Ayala’s lawyer Jordan Campbell, Kelly made a passionate speech.
“Remember that segment I did on the pronouns … when I was at NBC?” she asked.
… I’m kind of emotional about it because look at this poor girl, what was done to her.
I realize now I was part of this problem. My heart was in the right place. I wasn’t trying to push anything bad on kids. I thought I was being supportive of them. I thought I was promoting anti-bullying, and now I just have such regret about it, and I’m not a regretful person as you know.
If you’re not actively fighting against this you are part of the problem. You are hurting people like Isabel. You have to fight, whether it’s a donation, or just using your voice, or retweeting support for people like Isabelle or Jordan.
Do it. Do something. Just do something. Please, don’t protect yourself. And don’t be lured into thinking it’s empathetic to support this radical, radical experimentation on minors.
Children’s rights activist Billboard Chris took to X, formerly Twitter, to attract attention to the interview.
Alaya is suing her doctors and the American Academy of Pediatrics for the physical and mental damage the proscribed “gender-affirming” procedures have caused her.
Ayala told Kelly that she got sucked into transgender ideology at a young age and how doctors coerced her parents to consent to the harmful hormonal injections.
She said that the physicians told her parents that Ayala might commit suicide if she delayed testosterone injections.
Ayala told Kelly that she was diagnosed with autism as a kid and sexually assaulted in her childhood.
“That definitely warped how I saw the world and gave me intense trauma,” the 21-year-old said. “So when I was in my preteens, I sought out answers.”
Ayala said that she knows now that being sexually abused and having autism are risk factors for getting drawn into gender ideology.
“I was on social media for the first time. I was making friends, and I discovered what being transgender is,” she recalled.
When she saw “how happy these people seemed,” Ayala felt “this thing was the answer.”
She said that content on the microblogging platform Tumblr was the most influential in her indoctrination into gender ideology.
“I feel like Tumblr is really what radicalizes a lot of young girls in terms of gender ideology,” Ayala stated.
At the time, Ayala was about 12 to 13 years old. One of the tactics she learned online was that in order to pressure parents to consent to hormone treatment, she was to lie and pretend that she was suicidal.
“It was kind of like what I read online,” she told Kelly. ”You’re going to need to push and make people show the gravity of the situation if you want to get what you want in terms of hormones. And that can mean lying. And that is a thing that I definitely see encouraged even nowadays in the trans community.”
“Oh my gosh, this is still at 12 or 13 years old. You’re seeing encouragement that you pretend you’re suicidal so that your parents will break down and get you the hormones,” Kelly responded. “This is so dark.”
Ayala had an appointment with pediatrician and child psychiatrist Dr. Jason Rafferty, who prescribed her testosterone to “treat” her gender dysphoria. She said that her mother was hesitant at first, but Rafferty and other doctors pressured her parents to take the hormones lest her daughter commit suicide.
“That’s kind of when they cornered my parents a bit more about that, making me go on hormones or … I would commit suicide,” she said.
As part of the recent bombshell leak called the “WPATH Files,” it was revealed that pro-LGBT doctors and transgender activists often use the risk of suicide as a justification for beginning “gender-affirming” drugs as early as possible. To debunk the baseless claim, journalist Michael Shellenberger cited a recent study from Finland that “found no scientific evidence to support the claim that drugs and surgeries prevent suicide among people with gender dysphoria.”
Ayala started taking testosterone when she was 14 years old. Six to eight months into having the regular hormone injections, she was hospitalized due to a suicide attempt. Despite this, Dr. Rafferty continued prescribing testosterone to her.
Describing the effects of taking cross-sex hormones for years, Ayala said: “I was growing mass amounts of body hair. I was sweating ten times more than I usually did. I was gaining a lot of weight. I was really angry. It was just a lot. My menstrual cycle stopped. It was pretty jarring.”
Ayala also developed an autoimmune disease during that time. She implied that it was likely linked to the cross-sex hormone injections.
“When I was seeing my second doctor, she diagnosed me with hypothyroidism, and that eventually devolved into Hashimoto’s disease, which is an autoimmune disease of the thyroid,” she recalled. “And it has been really debilitating on my physical health. And I was a really healthy kid beforehand. All I really had were allergies.”
“So, it [Hashimoto’s disease] didn’t seem like something that I would just develop out of nowhere,” she added.
“I’ll never be the way I was before I started testosterone,” the 21-year-old lamented. “My bone structure is compromised due to the fact that I was a growing and developing teenager and actively taking testosterone. I’m dealing with things such as vaginal atrophy, irregular periods.”
“I don’t even know if I’m fertile or if I’m ever going to be able to have children,” she continued. “And there’s also just a lot of the emotional things as well that go along with this.”
Ayala started her de-transition process at 17 years of age after she had first learned it was an option from the testimony of another woman who had “de-transitioned.”
With the help of her lawyer, Dr. Jordan Campbell, she is now suing Dr. Rafferty, Dr. Michelle Forcier, and the American Academy of Pediatrics for recommending the harmful “treatments.”
The Rhode Island state lawsuit on behalf of Ayala alleges Dr. Michelle Forcier and Dr. Jason Rafferty placed Ayala and other gender-confused individuals on “a conveyor belt of life-altering puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and/or experimental surgeries.”
Both Forcier, a professor at Brown University’s medical school, and Rafferty are prominent supporters of the chemical and surgical mutilation of children. Both also work at Lifespan Physician Group, a named defendant and a dominant medical care provider in Rhode Island.
Forcier famously appeared in Matt Walsh’s What is a Woman movie. She also worked as a Planned Parenthood abortionist and claimed that “babies and infants understand differences in gender.”
Rafferty drafted the American Academy of Pediatrics “comprehensive care” statement, which supported the genital and surgical mutilation of gender-confused kids.
Dr. Jordan Campbell said that the primary motivation for Ayala and other detransition clients who are suing pro-LGBT doctors and organizations is not to get financial compensation but to prevent the suffering of other children and adolescents trapped in gender ideology.
In 2016, Meghan Kelly defended Barack Obama’s federal transgender guidance requiring all public schools in the nation to allow members of one biological sex to use the locker rooms, showers, and restrooms as members of the opposite sex or lose federal funding.