Transgender Patient Regrets Sex Change Surgery Nearly Thirty Years Later

Corinna Cohn, a biological male who had sex change surgery at 19 years old, described the regret that came decades later in a Washington Post opinion article Monday.

Anxiety, depression and same-sex attraction drove Cohn to undergo irreversible surgery early in life, according to the article. Cohn later felt regret about losing the ability to have children, becoming permanently dependent on medication and taking on health risks related to cross-sex hormones and reduced testosterone.

“As a teenager, I was repelled by the thought of having biological children,” Cohn wrote. “Years later, I was surprised by the pangs I felt as my friends and younger sister started families of their own.”

Young people are now able to get sex change surgeries quickly and without intensive psychological evaluations, Cohn explained, especially in light of professional pressure to “affirm” gender-confused young people through medical procedures.

“I shudder to think of how distorting today’s social media is for confused teenagers. I’m also alarmed by how readily authority figures facilitate transition,” Cohn wrote.

Cohn urged transgender people to slow down before making permanent, life-altering medical decisions, explaining that their feelings about their bodies will likely change as they get older and experience relationships.

“I once believed that I would be more successful finding love as a woman than as a man, but in truth, few straight men are interested in having a physical relationship with a person who was born the same sex as them,” Cohn wrote. “In high school, when I experienced crushes on my male classmates, I believed that the only way those feelings could be requited was if I altered my body.”

Alabama’s legislature passed a bill Thursday banning sex change procedures  for children, which if signed by Republican Gov. Kay Ivey, will be the first law of its kind in the U.S.