Catholic Chicago Hospital Chose Ideology Over Biology In Treating Biological Girl Who Believed She Was Male, De-Transitioner Says

Conservative News DailyJuly 25, 2022

A biological woman who formerly identified as a transgender man says that a Chicago area hospital opted to prioritize gender ideology over biological realities when she fled to that hospital for help.

De-transitioner Helena Kerschner, 23, shared with The Daily Wire that she checked herself into AMITA Health Saint Joseph Hospital Chicago in the summer of 2017. Since she identified as a transgender man at the time, she believes she used the name Vincent Jaszczak (her mother’s maiden name).

The reason for her hospital visit? For the past 12 months she had been pumping herself full of very high doses of testosterone in an attempt to transition to become a biological man, she said.

And she says it was wreaking havoc on her emotions.

“When I would get angry I would have the urge to externalize it, but I didn’t want to hurt anyone,” she explained. “It re-routed all my emotions to anger…instead of feeling sad, afraid of something, I would instantly go from zero to rage.”

She also said she couldn’t cry, a common side effect for women on testosterone, and something she found tremendously frustrating. “I would get to the point of being upset that, before testosterone, I would have been sobbing. It would all just kind of well up inside me, but no tears would come.”

The Chicago Hospital

Overcome with her emotional reaction to the testosterone, Kerschner said she ultimately checked herself into AMITA Health Saint Joseph Hospital Chicago, a Catholic hospital that supposedly abides by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Healthcare Services.

Though the USCCB directives do not specifically reference transgender treatments or counseling, the Catholic Church teaches that there are only two genders: male and female. Neither AMITA Health Saint Joseph Hospital Chicago nor the USCCB responded to requests for comment from The Daily Wire.

According to Kerschner, the psychiatrists at AMITA Health Saint Joseph Hospital Chicago didn’t seem to care about the underlying cause of her distress (the testosterone).

In fact, she said, they began medically treating her as though she were a biological man in emotional distress.

Kerschner does not remember which psychiatrists specifically treated her, but she said that the decision to favor her stated gender over her actual biology is not surprising in light of the “very complex psychological” debate on gender identity that has permeated the medical world.

“It’s an incredibly politically charged issue and you’re at risk of being accused of discrimination or harassment or conversion therapy,” she said. “I think it should be different. Gender identity stuff might be incredibly complex, but an 18-year-old girl on 100 milligrams of testosterone having meltdowns, that’s not very complex.”

“I think that it’s just too dangerous for these providers who are really only going to be talking to these people for a week or so until they leave the hospital and they never see them again or don’t see them until they come back to the hospital,” she continued. “It’s just not worth the risk for these doctors and nurses to even bring it up. So yeah, I think it’s more of an issue with psychiatry as a field and the way that these hospitals work.”

Seemingly treating her as though she were a biological man, doctors reportedly diagnosed Kerschner with borderline personality disorder, prescribed her two antidepressants, Wellbutrin and Lexapro, the anti-anxiety medication Klonopin, and the antipsychotic medication Abilify.

AMITA Health Saint Joseph Hospital Chicago has not responded to The Daily Wire’s requests for comment on this point or others.

Though Kerschner says she listed on her intake form that she had been taking 100 milligrams of testosterone per week, she said there was no discussion of how, specifically, the testosterone was affecting her.

And, though her medical records said that her sex was female, according to Kerschner, the hospital staff validated her gender identity and overlooked her biological sex, medically and socially, treating her as though she were, in fact, a biological man.

The Daily Wire has not obtained a copy of those medical records, and the hospital did not respond to requests for comment on this point.

Kerschner said that she stayed at St. Joseph’s Hospital for six or seven days on her first visit. Then she went home.

But a psychiatrist at her out-patient program told her she needed to go back to the hospital, Kerschner said. The young woman explained that she had been telling her psychiatrist about her rage attacks (though she said she didn’t know it was rage at the time and thought these were psychotic episodes) and how she felt suicidal and hopeless.

After she left the hospital this time, she said, she slowly weaned herself off the testosterone.

Getting The Hormones

Kerschner said she obtained the testosterone from a Chicago Planned Parenthood clinic where she first went to begin hormonal treatment on August 15, 2016.

She was 18 years old at the time, she said, describing in