Mosley: The truth is that detransition is really a mental act

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(The Center Square) – Prisha Mosley and her legal counsel on Tuesday made arguments against eight defendants in pursuit of medical malpractice at the North Carolina Court of Appeals.

Trey Shelton, representing Mosley, said affirmation of the case would yield more abuses, and more childhood gender transition abuses. He told the two Republicans and one Democrat hearing the oral arguments they will send a message with either result, one which many across the country are watching.

Matt Sawchak, counsel for a therapist among the defendants, called the “emerging area of mental health and gender identity” a place where problems are not all alike and “require clinical judgment and intellectual skill.”

As he defended doctors’ protection in their opinions based on professional expertise, Justice Jefferson Griffin interrupted asking, “Is it even practicing medicine, to tell a girl she can grow a penis?”

As is nearly always the case, justices did not immediately give a ruling.

At age 17, Mosley’s healthcare known colloquially and politically as “gender-affirming” included testosterone injections and a double mastectomy. While a July 2023 litigation failed, state law in 2025 changed the statute of limitations reopening her chance at justice and possibly a landmark decision equal to or greater than the $2 million verdict earlier this year awarded Fox Varian in New York.

Born a female, surgeries were performed to change Mosley to a boy. State law in 2025 made North Carolina the 18th state to define men and women in its General Statutes and also increased the statute of limitations to 10 years for those seeking justice for harm from gender transition.

Her litigation charges healthcare providers with medical malpractice, negligence and fraud.

Mosley, now living in Michigan, filed the lawsuit in Gaston County in July 2023. At the time, the statute of limitations was generally three years and had an absolute cutoff at four.

“The truth is that detransition is really a mental act,” Mosley said in a network interview Tuesday evening. “It's the decision to stop making the harm worse because what my doctors have done to me is irreversible.

“There's no going back to the body I had before I was medicalized. I'll never be able to buy new breasts with all of the money in the world or suck the testosterone out of my body and make it like it was before. But detransition has been a mental reconciliation with my sex, accepting that I'm a woman and a female and healthy ways to be one.”

Defendants are Dr. Eric Emerson; Piedmont Plastic Surgery and Dermatology; Brie Klein-Fowler; Family Solutions; Shana Gordon; Tree of Life Counseling; Dr. Martha Fairbanks Perry; and Moses Cone Memorial Hospital, doing business as Cone Health.

Plaintiff listed in the litigation is Charlie Mosley, also known as Prisha Mosley, also known as Abigail Mosley.