An obstetrician who calls herself "a lesbian" and "a lifelong Democrat" and who once specialized in caring for transgender patients says she was forced to resign from her position as chair of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists' Iowa chapter after she objected to the promotion of transgender 'medicalization and surgery'.

Key Takeaways:

• Dr. Karla Solheim describes herself as "a board-certified obstetrician, a lesbian, a mother, a lifelong Democrat..."

• She once worked in a gender clinic and has carried out multiple hysterectomies on women who wanted to live as men.

• After one healthy patient said she wanted a hysterectomy but did not identify as a man, Soheim began to question the validity of carrying out these surgeries on healthy individuals.

• After she began to research and learned that these 'treatments' for individuals weren't at all grounded in science, she voiced her objections and was forced to resign from her position as the chair of Iowa's ACOG chapter.

• ACOG is ideologically pro-abortion and also follows WPATH guidelines in relation to "transgender" issues.

The Backstory:

In an op-ed for The Free Press, Dr. Karla Solheim described herself as "a board-certified obstetrician, a lesbian, a mother, a lifelong Democrat, and up until recently, someone who placed immense faith and trust in the institutions that guided my profession."

But her faith and trust in those institutions, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), which promotes not only abortion but also transgender ideology, is waning.

READ: Exposing ACOG: The medical organization that supports and covers for the abortion industry

It began when Solheim "jumped at" the chance to work at an LGBTQ+ clinic but was "surprised to find" that the majority of her patients were identifying as transgender or nonbinary. She quickly realized that the clinic was "by and large, a gender clinic" that provided things like cross-sex hormones and surgeries for trans-identifying individuals.

As the (now-former) chair of the Iowa section of ACOG, Solheim said she "enjoyed feeling like I was providing much-needed care for an underserved community." Even after leaving that position, she continued to work with trans-identifying patients and performed more than a dozen medically unnecessary hysterectomies on healthy women. She wrote:

I thought the medical basis for these procedures was plausible: lifelong testosterone treatment could cause uterine complications, and in addition, it made sense to me that seeing menstrual blood, or even knowing they had a uterus in their bodies, could cause these patients profound anguish. I presumed that the benefits of a hysterectomy in these cases outweighed the risks.

But then, in 2023, it all began to unravel for Solheim when a patient came to see her with hopes of undergoing a hysterectomy. The woman was healthy and in her early 20s, but she wasn't planning to take testosterone or live her life as a man. She said she was "nonbinary," explained Solheim, "but presented very much like a conventional woman — in the way she looked, but also in the way she acted and dressed."

Solheim wrote:

I felt a deep sense of anxiety over performing the procedure. I couldn’t understand how her request was any different than asking for an elective hysterectomy — a surgery that has no medical justification, and against which ACOG strictly recommends.

I began to reflect on this patient, and all the other patients who had come through my door asking for me to remove their uteri. Why was it that for a healthy young person it would be nearly impossible to get their uterus removed without an underlying medical issue, but if one were simply to identify as a man with no other plans to transition — or even just say they are nonbinary — the surgery is freely available?

Yet, when she attempted to speak with other OB/GYNs about her concern, she received heavy pushback.

They told her that a hysterectomy on a healthy woman was "medically necessary" and that ACOG was "guided by WPATH's guidelines," which "explicitly recommended it."

READ: Exposing ACOG: Population control enthusiasts influenced organization’s abortion advocacy

She was called "ignorant" and a "transphobe" by doctors who offered no evidence-based argument to support such a procedure.

She ultimately decided not to carry out the hysterectomy, and soon after, she had a visit from a patient seeking to detransition.

"I had been told for years that detransitioning was so rare, so unlikely, that I was shocked to find someone in my small community going through it," she said.

Zoom Out:

WPATH is the World Professional Association of Transgender Health, and it portrays 'gender-affirming' practices as "fact-based" and settled science.

Its "Standards of Care and Ethical Guidelines” are cited and promoted by several medical groups, including ACOG, but it is heavily tied to endocrinologist and sexologist Harry Benjamin, who believed that some persons could be “born in the wrong body” and could be “cured” through “transition,” as Live Action News previously reported.

Benjamin's ideology “countered accepted theories at the time as it eschewed the typical treatment of using psychotherapy to realign a person’s mind with his or her biological reality.” 

Thanks to WPATH's lax guidelines, Planned Parenthood has been caught willingly prescribing hormones to some minors during their first appointment, with no prior mental health evaluation or professional diagnosis.

WPATH is currently facing legal and governmental challenges regarding its standards of care, with critics stating that its guidelines lack scientific backing and that the group has suppressed evidence that contradicts its narrative and mission so that it can promote deceptive claims on the safety and efficacy of cross-sex treatments and surgeries.

As for ACOG, its ideology is stridently pro-abortion; though the general public may assume ACOG is an impartial and neutral medical organization, it is not.

READ: The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists isn’t neutral. It’s pro-abortion.

The Details:

Although as chair, Solheim had agreed to defend ACOG and adhere to its guidance, she came to realize that there was no real body of research that supported carrying out cross-sex invasive surgeries.

"I couldn't find a single good long-term, longitudinal study on the health outcomes of transgender patients who underwent treatment including hormone replacement therapy and surgery," she said.

Then she began to learn about the scandals, such as that of the UK's Tavistock Gender Service for Children, which shut down after an inspection found it gave "inadequate" care to patients. And she listened to the Federal Trade Commission's 2015 hearing that suggested WPATH leaders had "unethically manipulated their data or put pressure on researchers to produce outcomes that supported their preexisting guidelines," said Solheim.

She added:

I was floored to discover the research basis into gender medicine both for adolescents and adults was not just poor; it was fraudulent. I couldn’t understand how my medical association, let alone others in my field, could endorse it.

After she published an essay exposing WPATH and calling for an "investigation into medical fraud," ACOG's vice president Rachel Pittman emailed her. The two had a 20-minute meeting that ended with Solheim offered a choice: stop speaking out against WPATH and unnecessary surgeries marketed as 'gender-affirming' care, or resign.

She wrote:

Rather than hear my concerns and take them seriously, my national medical association chose to silence me. They chose to be complicit in a campaign to promote ideology in medicine over evidence-backed science.

Whenever WPATH’s proponents are asked to defend their guidelines, they don’t cite the weak scientific evidence. Their strongest argument is always that all major medical associations in the United States have adopted them.

That’s hard to argue with. And it was true until this past February, when the American Society of Plastic Surgeons became the first major medical association to no longer endorse medicalization of minors dealing with gender dysphoria.

Solheim expected medical organization leaders to change their recommendations once they learned the truth, but instead she has only seen them attempt to silence those who question these unnecessary surgeries.

"They’re now more interested in silencing critics than they are in standing up for what is best for our patients. I know this because it’s exactly what I witnessed at ACOG," she said.

What's Happening Now:

Soheim is calling medical transitioning "dangerous" and said it is her "duty" to tell the truth.

Now, she is the lead medical adviser of the LGB Courage Coalition, a lesbian, gay, and bisexual advocacy group that is working to "restore evidence-based care in gender medicine."

Her goal is to help others understand that speaking out against the lack of evidence supporting so-called "gender affirming" surgeries is not "hateful like the mainstream leads them to believe; it's based on the truth."