Fact Check: Ad Targeting Ohio Democrat Features Detransitioner Who Was an Adult When She Had Surgery
“To say that you had surgery or you were forced into surgery as a minor is clearly inaccurate… Did not live in Ohio, had no connections to Ohio,” one local Democrat said.
A recent attack ad targeting former senator and current Ohio Democratic Senate candidate Sherrod Brown and falsely claiming he supports gender-affirming surgeries on children is being called out and fact-checked.
Brown lost his Ohio U.S. Senate seat in 2024 to Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno. He’s now running to unseat Ohio’s other senator, John Husted, another Republican.
Some of the ads, which are from the Senate Leadership Fund, targeting Brown feature a detransitioner named Soren Aldaco.
“Sherrod Brown supports sex changes for minors, irreversible surgery on kids like me,” Aldaco says in one ad.
In another, she says she was misled into the care.
In the ad, she says she received surgery without parental consent.
“Well, as it turns out, Aldaco received surgery without parental consent because she was 19. Records show she lived and received her treatments in Texas, not Ohio,” News 5 of Cleveland reports.
In court documents provided in a public Texas Supreme Court case Aldaco is pursuing, her legal team said she received a double mastectomy when she was an adult.
Major medical associations in the U.S. support gender-affirming care for trans youth. Surgeries are almost never recommended for those under 18.
Columbus OB-GYN Dr. Anita Somani, and a Democrat state representative, told the station, “Under 18, there is not a single surgery that’s been done here in the state, so I think the ads are misleading.”
“They are lies,” she added.
“To say that you had surgery or you were forced into surgery as a minor is clearly inaccurate… Did not live in Ohio, had no connections to Ohio,” the lawmaker told the outlet.
In 2023, Brown said he believed medical decisions should be between families and their doctors. It’s there that the attack ad was inspired, it seems.
LGBTQ Nation notes that Brown has been criticized for his treatment of trans issues in the past, including supporting trans exclusion in school sports.
In response to the recent ads, Brown’s campaign released an ad pointing out that it’s illegal in the state to do gender-affirming surgeries on minors.
“Here they go again, those same attacks against Sherrod Brown. With everything going on, that’s what they’re talking about. In Ohio, it’s against the law to perform transgender surgeries on kids. That’s right, it’s illegal,” several people in the ad say.
