Disclaimer: To protect her identity, we’ve identified our subject as just ‘the girl.’
The girl wants to be a pharmacist to help make medications more accessible. She plays the guitar and enjoys jamming to 80s and 90s goth music with her friends. She wears black eye shadow and black tights, and she enjoys the goth scenes online and in person.
She’s 16 years old and transgender, but she’s not open about her identity at school.
The girl prefers it this way so she can quietly advocate for others while passing as cisgender. She also fears for what could happen to her safety if the wrong person found out.
“Ever since I could think, I knew I wasn’t a boy,” she said. “I used to have mental breakdowns about being seen as male before I even knew what being trans was.”
“Ever since I could think, I knew I wasn’t a boy,” she said. “I used to have mental breakdowns about being seen as male before I even knew what being trans was.”
Transgender youth make up about 1.8% of the population, according to The Trevor Project. Roughly 40% of transgender youth were bullied in the last year, and 26% reported attempting to take their own lives. Their voices are rarely heard loudest in school board meetings, hospital boardrooms, courtrooms, or statehouses.
And yet, officials make decisions that affect their lives daily with little input from those who hurt on the receiving end of discriminatory laws and policies.
When she turned 13, the girl received puberty blockers to block unwanted male traits from developing. At 16, she was prescribed hormone-replacement therapy to feminize her body.
Access to gender-affirming care made life possible. It allowed her to be present in her own body. To show up at school without dissociating. To imagine a future rooted in hope rather than survival.
From the time she turned 13, gender-affirming care became something she could count on. She rejoined close-knit groups of friends. She found confidence. She learned what it felt like to move through the world without constant internal alarm.
That access is now disappearing.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services threatened to revoke federal funding from hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to patients under 19. Shortly after, UCHealth and Denver Health — Colorado’s two largest providers — announced they would stop offering such care. For families like hers, the consequences were immediate and personal.
The email from her doctor informing her that her estrogen prescription had been paused indefinitely left her reeling.
“After a decade-long dissociative state, I feel like I’m finally in tune with reality and my true self,” she said. “So it feels really awful that politicians who aren’t trans and don’t actually care about trans healthcare can take that away from me.”
“After a decade-long dissociative state, I feel like I’m finally in tune with reality and my true self,” she said. “So it feels really awful that politicians who aren’t trans and don’t actually care about trans healthcare can take that away from me.”
The girl is not asking for special treatment. She is asking for continuity. For the chance to keep holding onto the protection she gained from the world seeing her as she saw herself.
She graduates high school in 2028, but imagining a future without gender-affirming care feels bleak.
The National Institutes of Health and other global public health organizations have repeatedly found strong links between access to gender-affirming care and improved mental health outcomes for transgender people. The evidence is not ambiguous. The consequences of removal are well-documented.
Still, transgender youth remain politically expendable.
The girl is one of many whose lives hinge on access to care — and whose voices, without allies, are easily drowned out. Trans youth are never the majority. Their safety depends on whether others are willing to stand with them, speak up, and insist that their lives are not theoretical.
Right now, she is being told — through policy, through silence, through delay — that her care is optional. That her well-being can be paused. That her future is negotiable.
She and other trans youth cannot fight this alone.
What happens next will determine whether the girl gets to keep becoming herself — whether she gets to finish growing into the person she has already fought so hard to be.
This story is about one girl's life, but thousands of youth who've lost access to gender-affirming care can relate. At The Center, we're here for you. Check out our website for information about the support we offer.
Losing access to this life-affirming care could ultimately hinder her from her dream of becoming a pharmacist to help others access life-saving medications.