A 21-year-old woman is suing Planned Parenthood, her surgeon, and her mental health counselors for failing to provide her with proper medical guidance before pushing her towards medically altering her life forever.
Cristina Hineman, who experienced gender dysphoria and other mental illnesses as a teen, sought “gender-affirming care” from Planned Parenthood three weeks after turning 18, and got a testosterone prescription from a Planned Parenthood nurse practitioner after an appointment lasting less than 30 minutes.
This one fateful appointment changed everything.
The road to Planned Parenthood
Hineman, who was homeschooled in elementary and middle school, grew up in the Hudson Valley in New York. In a video by the Independent Women’s Forum, Hineman described herself as “a really happy kid” and “a girly kid” who “loved being outside.” At the age of 12, Hineman felt that she was attracted to other girls, and searched the internet to find out what this could mean.
Hineman’s lawsuit explains:
What she discovered confused her. Aside from reading about same-sex attraction, terms like ‘demi-girl’ and ‘non-binary’ popped up. She found it overwhelming but nonetheless intriguing on a certain level. A seed was planted, and for the next several years Cristina investigated these topics online.
When Hineman began attending a public high school, she became friends with peers who called themselves “trans,” and she felt “left out” because she wasn’t transgender. She decided to call herself “Violet” instead of Cristina.
Hineman began to experience mental health struggles, including depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation. By late 2018, at age 15, Hineman’s struggles drove her to seek treatment at a children’s mental health center. By then, Hineman was “scratching her arms and biting her hands to cope with her depressive symptoms,” according to her lawsuit.
Hineman began taking antidepressant and anti-anxiety medications, despite her mother’s misgivings. In February of 2021, at age 17, Hineman was evaluated for autism and was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, a condition on the autism spectrum which affects social and repetitive behaviors.
Despite the diagnosis, Hineman’s therapist zeroed in on her gender confusion, affirming it instead of addressing her other diagnoses.
Then, during the COVID-19 lockdowns, Hineman consumed large amounts of online “trans” content, mainly on YouTube and TikTok. This was “the nail in the coffin,” according to Hineman. She began to identify as “transgender” while still a minor, and her therapist “unquestioningly ‘affirmed’ her new gender identity,” according to the lawsuit.
Hineman began working with a second therapist, who pushed Hineman to begin the process of “medically transitioning” — again, without treating the teen’s mental health comorbidities or even digging deeper into her gender dysphoria.
This led Hineman to Planned Parenthood, life-altering testosterone drugging, and a double-mastectomy – which her lawsuit calls “profoundly damaging surgery.”
“Appalling breaches of the standard of care”
“I had heard online about Planned Parenthood as a provider which will just give you hormones if you want them, and doesn’t do any kind of gatekeeping,” Hineman said. She went to a facility operated by the Upper Hudson Planned Parenthood affiliate in November of 2021, three weeks after her 18th birthday, to request testosterone.
While Hineman’s lawsuit states that her consultation was roughly 30 minutes long, she recalled in her interview that the appointment was “definitely less than thirty minutes, if we take out the waiting room time.”
She walked out of Planned Parenthood with a prescription for testosterone.
According to the lawsuit, Planned Parenthood failed to treat Hineman properly in other, more significant ways. No one at Upper Hudson Planned Parenthood — no doctor, nurse practitioner, or anyone else — requested or “required any previous medical or mental health records, let alone asked about her mental health history. They did not inquire about or attempt to address or resolve any of Cristina’s myriad mental health comorbidities. They simply took her at her word that she was a candidate for testosterone, a Schedule III controlled substance.”
Planned Parenthood reportedly diagnosed Hineman with a gender identity disorder without a mental health evaluation and without even looking at her mental health or medical records. And though Planned Parenthood staff “took initial blood samples [from Hineman], they did not wait for any of the results before prescribing her with testosterone. Instead, Cristina was prescribed a 3-month supply of gel testosterone at this ‘initial visit,’” the lawsuit states.
The Planned Parenthood nurse practitioner who saw Hineman for her initial consultation gave her a brief “Informed Consent” form to sign before prescribing the testosterone to the teen, which the lawsuit describes as a “shockingly brief and entirely deficient recounting of the known risks associated with taking testosterone for gender identity disorder or gender dysphoria.”
Both the form and the staff neglected to mention “numerous known risks and side effects of taking testosterone for girls or women, including, but not limited to: vaginal atrophy, vocal pain or damage, possible changes to sexual orientation, emotional lability, anger or emotional expressions, changes to bone density and structure (e.g., over-broadening of the shoulders, altering pelvic development, etc.), facial masculinization, and development of permanent masculine features, such as an Adam’s apple,” notes the lawsuit.
Additionally, neither the form nor Planned Parenthood staff advised Hineman that cross-sex hormone usage for gender dysphoria is not FDA-approved and is an off-label use of drugs; she was also not informed of testosterone’s addictive effects. “Defendants utterly failed to obtain informed consent,” the lawsuit claims.
The lawsuit notes that Hineman didn’t truly receive care at Planned Parenthood:
Diagnosing a patient with gender identity disorder and providing a prescription for cross-sex hormones to treat gender identity disorder or gender dysphoria after a single, thirty-minute meeting where no mental health evaluation or assessment was performed and where no attempt was made to resolve myriad mental health comorbidities are appalling breaches of the standard of care.
She visited Planned Parenthood for over a year, and the staff continued to prescribe her testosterone, even increasing her dosage twice at the teen’s request. Though Hineman’s blood was drawn, lab work was never discussed with her; she did not know whether her blood had ever been evaluated.
Planned Parenthood Upper Hudson advertises an “informed consent model” for so-called “gender affirming therapy” (GAT). This means that the affiliate does not require medical referrals in order to prescribe life-altering drugs, as advertised on the affiliate website. Planned Parenthood Upper Hudson even offers pubertal suppression, advertised on the same webpage. While most Planned Parenthood affiliates outline a comprehensive GAT plan — including a physical assessment, a review of medical history, and regular lab work — these protocols were clearly not followed in Hineman’s case.
Going under the knife
On February 1, 2023, Hineman’s healthy breasts were removed by plastic surgeon Jeffrey L. Rockmore; Hineman’s therapists supported her decision to undergo this entirely elective surgery. According to the lawsuit, Planned Parenthood Upper Hudson staff failed to advise Hineman to stop taking testosterone before her surgery, even though being on the hormone significantly increases the risk of blood clots after surgery.
In hindsight, Hineman expressed regret that she had not stopped testosterone before “going under the knife,” as the drug suppressed her natural sex hormones and she feels this may have influenced her decision to remove her breasts.
Very soon after her mastectomy, Hineman longed to live as a woman and regretted her attempt to transition. About six weeks after her mastectomy, she suffered a mental breakdown. Emotional and full of regret, she attempted to find even small ways to reclaim her femininity.
Hineman returned to Planned Parenthood after stopping testosterone use to ask about what symptoms to expect as she went off of hormones. But when she spoke with the same nurse practitioner who had prescribed her testosterone, the staffer had no information for her regarding the detransitioning process.
“She had no idea… That was kind of the moment I just realized, like, wow, like, this woman doesn’t even know what she’s talking about. I don’t understand how my consent could have been informed if the person prescribing it to me doesn’t even know what happens if I stop. Let alone me knowing,” Hineman said.
As the lawsuit alleges, Planned Parenthood Upper Hudson failed to treat Hineman as an individual with her own medical history, instead blindly following Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s mandate to prescribe “gender-affirming” drugs upon request. The affiliate website states that it is “committed to… eliminating barriers to [transgender] care.” Hineman is suing both Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Upper Hudson Planned Parenthood.
Today, Hineman suffers from what may be permanent physical damage in addition to her missing breasts — a scarred and tight chest, nerve damage, masculine body and facial hair, an inability to lift weights, and more.
Hineman hopes that her lawsuit will help other young people to avoid the tragic path she took. “I don’t want this to happen to other young people like me — young people with mental health problems who struggle to find their identity. I don’t want them to be rushed down this path and to feel like this is the only choice that they have to live a good life, because it’s not, and people don’t tell you that in these kinds of spaces,” she said.
The appearance date for her lawsuit, filed last year, is scheduled for April 28, 2025.
Planned Parenthood claims to be committed to helping men and women, including minors, with types of “gender-affirming care” while cashing in by rushing vulnerable people through life-altering, experimental procedures without following appropriate medical standards — and without real informed consent.
This is not real healthcare. It harms men, women, and children. It is time to defund Planned Parenthood.
