A Melbourne woman who underwent gender transition treatment in an attempt to “transition” to being a man, including surgery to remove breasts and testosterone treatment, is now suing her doctors who performed her treatment, saying she could not give consent.

Mel Jefferies, a 33-year-old woman who underwent medical “transition” but is now living again as a woman, is suing two doctors and Monash Health for negligence, saying that the gender treatment had caused “significant injury”.

The three doctors involved failed to deliver professional standards of care, which require doctors to ensure that “anyone experiencing mental health conditions must have these well-managed and thoroughly controlled prior to the commencement of the testosterone treatment”.

Jefferies says her years of mental health issues weren’t under control at the time of her treatment and were exacerbated by the surgery and testosterone treatment prescribed by her doctors.

This was backed by letters from her doctors acknowledging that Jefferies “has a complex mental health history” that included “body image disorder” and “depression”.

The case highlights the danger of Australia’s “gender affirming care” model, where a person’s gender identity is “affirmed and supported” when it conflicts with their biological sex.

“For years I just kept getting affirmed by the medical fraternity and the trans community for something I wasn’t,” she told the Sydney Morning Herald.

The “gender affirming care” model was developed by a team of physicians and researchers at the Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne.

But it was never officially endorsed by the National Health and Medical Research Council council, which has now been tasked with developing new national guidelines for the “care of trans and gender diverse people under 18 with gender dysphoria”.

Stories like Mel’s are growing in number and are the tragic result of pushing transgender ideology onto children and adolescents and silencing other approaches to treating gender confusion.

Religious perspectives and alternative medical opinions have been shut out of the gender and sex debates as the trend of gender confusion in children and teens in Australia has accelerated.

HRLA client Dr Jillian Spencer, a Queensland child psychiatrist, was stood down for speaking out against the affirming model, suffering career consequences as a result of her position on the treatment.

Now, the country is forced to reconcile with the fact that doctors and medical professionals, motivated by ideology, may have gotten it wrong.

There is a price to this ideology, in terms of lives severely impacted, irreversible damage done, and families placed under immense stress.

If Jefferies’ case proceeds to a judicial decision, it could represent a test case for the duty of care doctors owe towards people seeking affirming care.

Regardless of the outcome, it highlights the importance of freedom of conscience of medical professionals like Dr Spencer. It also demonstrates the need to protect freedom of speech so that these ideas can be discussed openly and confused young people can be given genuine alternatives.

HRLA will be following the story closely.