An attack ad against US Senate candidate Sherrod Brown features a woman claiming she had gender-affirming surgery as a minor in Ohio. Court records show she was 19 when she had surgery and lived in Texas, not Ohio. Ohio law prohibits gender-affirming surgeries for minors. The ad misrepresents both the facts of her case and how gender-affirming care for young people actually works.

What the ad actually claims

The Senate Leadership Fund, a Republican-aligned political action committee, has run a series of ads targeting Brown. Two of them feature Soren Aldaco, a social media influencer, who says on camera: "Sherrod Brown supports sex changes for minors, irreversible surgery on kids like me." Another version has her describing a "botched double mastectomy" following a "20-minute meeting" with doctors. A third ad says she was 15 when she was told she was transgender, and adds: "Surgery without my parents' consent. I was a kid."

It is a powerful emotional sequence. It is also, on its central factual claims, wrong.

What the records actually show

Aldaco's surgery is documented in a Texas Supreme Court case. She was 19 when she had her double mastectomy. She was a legal adult. She lived and received her care in Texas, not Ohio. The claim that surgery happened without parental consent is technically accurate only because parental consent is not required for a 19-year-old: she was old enough to make her own medical decisions, as any adult is.

Columbus-area OB-GYN Dr Anita Somani put it plainly: "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."

When the ad's misrepresentations were put to Republican strategist Bob Clegg, his response was to question whether 19-year-olds are really mature enough to make their own decisions. It is a striking position for someone defending an ad that accuses a politician of undermining parental rights.

What Sherrod Brown actually said

The ad traces back to a comment Brown made in 2023: that medical decisions should be made between families and their doctors, not politicians. That is not a radical position. It is the position of every major medical body that has looked at this question. The Senate Leadership Fund turned it into "forcing childhood sex change surgery," which is not what he said and not what he supports.

Brown's response ad is worth quoting: "In Ohio, it's against the law to perform transgender surgeries on kids. That's right, it's illegal." He is correct. Ohio has a ban in place. The state supreme court is reviewing it, but it stands. There was no surgery happening on Ohio minors before the ban, and there is none now.

Why this kind of misinformation causes harm

The harm is not abstract. When ads like this run at scale, they embed an image in the public mind: children being rushed into irreversible surgery, parents bypassed, doctors acting recklessly. None of that reflects how gender-affirming care actually works. The process is careful, gradual, and built around family involvement. Social steps come first. Puberty-related medication, if appropriate, follows. Surgery for minors is rare, legally restricted in most US states, and subject to extensive clinical oversight.

What the ad creates is not legitimate concern about a real practice. It is fear about a fiction. And that fear has consequences for real young people and their families, who find themselves living in a climate of suspicion and hostility, trying to access care that is already difficult to reach.

Aldaco's experience, whatever it was, belongs to her. Her regret is real and deserves to be taken seriously. Detransitioned people exist, and their voices matter. But using one adult's experience of care in another state to argue that a Senator is "forcing surgeries on kids" is not advocacy for her. It is a political manoeuvre that happens to use her face.

The question nobody in this ad is asking

Dr Somani noted that when Ohio was debating its gender-affirming care ban, the people brought forward as examples were consistently from out of state. If the problem were as widespread as the ads suggest, you would expect the evidence to come from the place where the law is being made. It does not, because the reality of gender-affirming care for young people looks nothing like the image these ads are selling.

The young people I hear from, and their families, are not being rushed anywhere. They are waiting. Waiting for appointments, waiting for assessments, waiting for someone to take them seriously. The crisis in trans youth healthcare is not that care happens too fast. It is that it is too hard to reach at all.

That story does not make a good attack ad. But it is the true one.

If there is a news story you would like me to cover then just let Sammy know.

Dr Helen Webberley is a Gender Specialist, Medical Educator, writer, and advocate, and the founder of GenderGP. She writes about gender diversity, trans healthcare, and the lives of trans people and their families.