On a Friday after school, 6-year-old Esa Rodrigues unraveled a ball of thread, scared her pet cat, told her family public opinion about her favorite colour, and touched her brother to call her “Bat Face Mornet.”
She then focused on the laser on a cherry-crisp flavored lip gloss through her teeth.
“Yes!” she cried, twisted, and opened the cap. ESA applied gloopy sparkly things to her bedroom, where the walls are hanging a large transgender pride flag.
Fesa said the flag would make her feel “important” and “happy.” She wants to take it off the wall and wear it as a cape.
Her parents initially questioned her identity, but that wasn’t the case anymore. Previously, their uneasy child was afraid of going to school, and when she got a boy’s haircut, she was baited at the barber shop and when she learned that she couldn’t get a period, she was rounded up in the fetal position on the bathroom floor.
Now the child happily runs up the hill, humming to himself, voicingly wondering if he lives in a small ceramic house with a fairy perched on a stone.
Her mother, Brittoni Packard Rodriguez, hopes that this joy and acceptance will remain. A combination of ESA desires, her doctor’s recommendations, and adolescent blockers may be needed when puberty begins, and estrogen may persist, allowing the ESA to grow into a body that suits her presence.
“In the long run, blockers will help prevent all of the surgeries and procedures that could become a reality for her if we don’t receive that care,” Packard Rodriguez said.
Drugs known as puberty blockers are widely used in conditions including prostate cancer, endometriosis, infertility and puberty. Now, the Trump administration is specifically trying to restrict use for transgender youth.
Feed’s Colorado homeland has long been known as a gender-affirming care heaven. This takes into account the state’s legally protected and important health insurance benefits. Medical asylum has moved to Colorado for such treatment over the past few years. As early as the 1970s, the town of Trinidad became known as the “gender-changing capital of the world” when Stanley Bieber, a former Army surgeon wearing a cowboy hat, made the mark for gender-affirming surgeries for adults.
On his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order rebutting the existence of transgender people by saying that “men can be identifiable to women, and therefore can be women, and vice versa.” The following week he issued another order calling for adolescent blockers and hormones for those under the age of 19, and calling for chemical “cutting” and “stains about the history of our country.” It directed the agency to take steps to stop recipients of federal research or education grants from offering it.
Then a Healthcare organization in Colorado. California; Washington, DC; elsewhere, they announced that they would comply preemptively. Colorado included three major healthcare institutions: Colorado Children’s Hospital, Denver Health and UCHEALTH. At the end of January and early February, the three systems quickly announced changes to gender maintenance care they provide to patients under the age of 19. There have been no new hormones or adolescent blocker prescriptions so far.
Children’s Hospital and Denver Health provided adolescent blockers and hormones on February 24th and February 19th, respectively, after Colorado joined the US District Court case in Washington. The court concluded that Trump’s orders regarding gender “discriminate based on transgender status and gender.” It granted a preliminary injunction blocking it from becoming effective in the four states involved in the lawsuit.
However, surgery has not resumed. Denver Health said it will continue to suspend surgeries that affirm the gender of patients under the age of 19 for patient safety, and consider uncertainties in the legal and regulatory environment.
Uchealth did not resume medicines or surgery for people under the age of 19. “Our providers are awaiting a more lasting decision from federal courts that may resolve uncertainties regarding providing this care,” wrote spokesman Kelli Christensen.
Trans youth and their families said the court’s ruling and two Colorado Health System decisions to resume treatment have not resolved the issue. I bought time to stockpile prescriptions, and try to find a private practitioner who has been properly trained to monitor blood tests accordingly and adjust prescriptions.
The Trump administration continues to push health providers beyond their early executive orders by threatening to withhold or cancel federal funds awarded. In early March, the Department of Health Resources and Services said it would consider funding for graduate medical education at children’s hospitals.
KFF Health News requested comment from Deputy White House Press Secretary Kush Desai but did not receive a response. HHS Deputy Reporter Emily Hilliard responded with links to two previous press releases.
Medical interventions are just one type of gender-affirming care, and the treatment process is long and thorough. Researchers found that even among private insurance people, transgender youths are more likely to receive adolescent blockers and hormones. Interestingly, most gender-affirming breast reduction surgery performed on men and boys is performed on patients, not transgender.
Kai, 14, wishes he could go to an adolescent blocker. He lives in Centennial, a suburb of Denver. KFF Health News is not using his full name because he is worried about his family being harassed or targeted.
Kai got his period when he was eight years old. By the time he realized he was transgender in middle school, it was too late to start an adolescent blocker.
His doctors prescribed birth control to suppress his duration, so he would not have reminded him of his gender discomfort each month. Then, when he turned 14, he began taking testosterone.
Kai said that if he is not currently receiving hormone therapy, he is dangerous to himself.
“I can say I am happy with my body and I can be happy in public without thinking that everyone is staring at me.
His mom, Shelley, said she was happy to see Kai relaxing with his person.
Shelley, who asked her to use her middle name to prevent her family from being identified, said she began stockpiling testosterone the moment Trump was elected, but didn’t consider how it would affect the availability of birth control. However, after the administrative order, the prescriptions also became weaker. Shelley said that a doctor at Kai from Uchealth must set up a special meeting to make sure the doctors can continue to prescribe it.
So for now, Kai has what he needs. But for Shelley, it’s cold comfort.
“We don’t think it’s very safe,” she said. “These are just extensions.”
The family is coming up with plans to leave the country. If Shelley and her husband can get a job in New Zealand, they will move there. Shelley said such mobility is a privilege that many others don’t have.
For example, David is an 18-year-old student at West Colorado University in the Rocky Mountain town of Gunnison. He asks to be identified only by his middle name, as he fears he will be targeted in this conservative, rural town.
David doesn’t have a passport, but he said he doesn’t want to leave Gunnison, even if he does. He is studying geology, learning to play bass, and has a good group of friends. He has plans to become a paleontologist.
The shelves in his dorm room are littered with his essentials, including fossils, old spice deodorizers, microwave macaroni, cheese and more. But there is no mirror. David said he developed the habit of avoiding them.
“For a long time I’ve had so many body violations and isomers that it can be a bit difficult to look in the mirror,” David said. “But when I do that, most of the time I see what I really like.”
He had been on testosterone for three years and the hormones helped him to produce a beard. In January, his doctor at Denver Health was told to stop prescribing it. His mom drove from her home to Gunnison for a few hours to deliver the news in person.
The prescription is currently on track, but not the mastectomy he had planned this summer. He wanted to have plenty of recovery time before his sophomore year. But no one knows who will do it in Colorado until he is 19 years old. He can easily get surgery to strengthen his breasts, but other states need to remove or remove surgical options.
“Colorado as a state was supposed to be a safe haven,” said his mother, Louise. “We have laws where trans people are entitled to health care, but our health care system is taking away that.”
It took eight years and around 10 healthcare providers and therapists to get David closer to the finish line. That’s a big deal after years of discomfort and discomfort.
“I’m still going, and I’ll continue, and there’s little they can do to stop me. “There’ll be trans people all the time, there’ll always be trans people.”
