A Child’s Healthy Body Is Not a Problem to Be Solved

By Chloe Cole

Monday, August 03, 2026

 

Like many in my generation, I was always trying to grapple with where I belonged when I was kid. I was the youngest of five children, separated from my older siblings by a wide age gap. As I grew older, I related most naturally with my brothers. I was a tomboy, though at the time, that word did not seem weighty or political. It simply described how I felt: a girl who felt more comfortable in pants and short hair than girly dresses and bouncy curls.

 

Fitting in at school was even harder. I didn’t necessarily struggle academically, but I struggled to find a purpose in the classroom. Bullying left me with memories that are still difficult to revisit. People could feel unpredictable and cruel, so naturally I felt that my healthiest and safest relationships were in the company of animals. They didn’t expect anything from me or ask me to be anything other than myself to deserve affection.

 

That is what I wanted more than anything: to feel loved. Yet I began to believe that, to make other people happy, I would have to become someone that I was not.

 

Puberty intensified my discomfort. I had once been excited about growing up, but my developing body drew unwanted attention. Adults and children alike made uncomfortable comments about my curves and maturing figure that only agitated me further.

 

At the age of twelve, I got my first phone, which unlocked access to the world of social media. Online, I found people who seemed remarkably similar to me. They spoke openly about difficult childhoods, alienation, identity, and the feeling that something about their bodies did not match who they were inside. The explanation they offered was simple: They had been born in the wrong body. It made sense that maybe I had been, too. The more I read, the more I wondered whether this was the cause of my resistance to the female stereotype — that maybe, inside, I wasn’t a girl at all.

 

No child that age can make fully informed adult decisions about identity, fertility, sexuality, or lifelong medical treatment. And yet, before I was even a teenager, I began moving down the path of transgenderism. At first, the changes were gradual. I cut my hair shorter. I changed how I dressed and even acted to some extent.

 

Eventually, I told my friends and parents that I was transgender. My parents were at a loss. They wondered whether this belief pointed to something bigger and deeper than just an identity crisis, and they responded by doing what any responsible parents would: They sought professional help.

 

Their hope was to send me to therapy, get to the bottom of this, and perhaps let me be a child again. Unfortunately, the exact opposite happened. My parents were not permitted to sit in on any of my conversations with the therapist. They had little idea what was being discussed behind closed doors, even as they watched their daughter grow more and more distressed.

 

Instead of asking why I felt disconnected from my body, the professionals around me taught me that my feelings were not only valid but that they dictated my identity. Meanwhile, they told my parents I would kill myself if I wasn’t affirmed completely.

 

While my parents had their hesitations, they allowed me to begin the medical process, having been emotionally blackmailed. By the time I entered high school, I went by a new name and was on puberty blockers and testosterone. The drugs were powerful — my voice and body changed drastically. People I had known for years didn’t even recognize me. I began using boys’ restrooms and locker rooms. Anyone who remembers high school can remember the smells and atmosphere of a boys’ bathroom. Beneath the awkwardness, as I reflect on that time, I now realize just how dangerous it would have been if the boys around me had discovered that I was female.

 

In June 2020, at the age of 15, I underwent a double mastectomy. For four years, I clung tightly to the belief that transition was the saving grace of my story. But life was not greener on the other side. I learned that young men carry struggles of their own, including profound loneliness and pressure to conceal vulnerability. There often seemed to be no place where a boy or man was allowed to struggle honestly. I experienced that isolation firsthand.

 

Harder questions began surfacing. What if I wanted to be a mother? Or what if I wanted to be a wife? In my desperate pursuit of finally feeling whole, I had lost pieces of myself that I could never get back. When it struck me that I would never be able to nurse my children and that the medical interference in my life could affect my ability to have biological children at all, the illusion began to collapse. I started reconnecting with reality — not all at once, but piece by piece.

 

This awakening lit a fire under me. I could not keep living a lie. I had a choice: to separate myself from the world and spend my life mourning what had been done, or to completely immerse myself in the fight against the ideology that had defined my life.

 

Realizing that future generations might be affected by whether or not I spoke up, I found my purpose. I began testifying before lawmakers and traveling the world speaking out against what had been done to me, working to ensure that, one day, every child in every state is protected.

 

I am so grateful to U.S. Representative Bob Onder (R., Mo.) for spearheading legislation bearing my name. As a physician, he understands that medicine carries an obligation to do no harm. In my case, and in the cases of too many others, that oath was broken.

 

The Chloe Cole Act provides a federal civil remedy for individuals who were subjected to irreversible gender interventions while they were minors. Rather than regulating gender interventions directly, the bill allows detransitioners and their parents to sue the medical professionals who prescribed puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, or performed gender surgeries. Those harmed may seek compensation for the lifelong physical, emotional, and financial harms those irreversible procedures caused. The bill also establishes a lengthy statute of limitations, ensuring that those harmed have a meaningful opportunity to seek justice.

 

My story cannot be rewritten, but another child’s story still can. Today, Congress has an opportunity to ensure that fewer families experience what mine did. The Chloe Cole Act would establish a national standard that puts children’s long-term health at the front and center of the medical system. That’s why I am calling on all members of Congress to move this legislation forward to a vote when they return in September. Every day lawmakers delay is another day vulnerable children are told that healthy bodies are problems to be solved rather than gifts to be protected.

 

There is nothing more evil than taking the most vulnerable of our society, lying to them about who they are, and taking away their health permanently. Yet I refuse to believe that evil gets the final word.

 

Everything I have gone through has shaped the woman I am today. I believe God has given purpose even to the parts of my story I would never have chosen. My suffering is not meaningless — this has become my life’s purpose. The Chloe Cole Act may bear my name, but it belongs to all of us.