“I feel like my main job is to make sure that they have the space to explore who they are and that they that any and all of it is okay,” she said in an interview with Teen Vogue. “That is part of why I do feel to protect them, at least currently, from a lot of the toxicity that’s coming out of this administration as well as other areas as well… If they were hearing every negative thing that comes out that they would feel less freedom to figure [their gender] out.”

Empowering Unsupportive Parents

A 2012 report by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law found that nearly 40% of homeless youth identify as LGBTQ, with a large percentage of those being transgender. The main reason transgender youth disproportionately end up homeless is because they are thrown out of the homes of their transphobic parents.

Previously, the Obama-era HUD equal access rule dictated that shelters who accept federal money had to house transgender homeless people in accordance to their gender identity. Now, the Trump administration has proposed allowing shelters that segregate according to gender to house vulnerable transgender girls with men, and vice versa for homeless transgender boys.

The risk of ending up on the street and not being able to access a shelter can mean that transgender adolescents decide to forego transitioning entirely in accordance with their parents’ transphobic wishes. That’s the situation for 19-year-old trans man Peter* from Texas. “[The HUD rule] scares me to death,” he told Teen Vogue over text. “I'm sickened that, should I attempt to seek safety in a shelter in the event that I'm kicked out [of my parents’ house], I'd be thrown out once more.”

Peter went to his local Planned Parenthood and was able to get a prescription for testosterone without parental permission because he’s legally an adult. However a few weeks later, his parents discovered the prescription and forced him to stop his injections or risk being kicked out of their home. Both of last week’s proposed rules could give Peter's parents even more influence over his decision-making.

“It gives them justification to keep me monitored and controlled at home,” he said, expressing that he feels helpless in this political moment. “I thought that I would be able to move forward and eventually move out and continue doing my thing. But now I have not only my family's ‘concern’ but also the threat of dying from something simple in the future because I'm visibly and (almost) openly trans.”

Restricting Access to Puberty Blockers and Other Essential Healthcare Needs

The use of puberty blockers for transgender adolescents remains one of the most controversial parts of trans-related health care. Even for supportive parents of transgender teens, blockers can be prohibitively expensive and insurance rarely covers it. Not only does the Trump healthcare rule open the door to doctors and clinicians to deny prescriptions for puberty blockers, but it could potentially allow other health care providers to turn away trans adolescents for other types of care.

That’s the situation faced by Sarah* with her 12-year-old trans son. Her son has health issues unrelated to his gender identity, which require care from five separate specialists, three of whom have refused to use her son’s proper name and pronouns despite a legal name change. She worries that one particular specialist who treats her son would drop them altogether if he felt empowered enough by Trump’s rules do so.

Despite a referral from a gender specialist, Sarah says her son was denied a prescription for puberty blockers by an endocrinologist. “He’s been going through puberty for about two years now and [the gender specialist] thought it was urgent to get him on blockers,” Sarah said in an interview with Teen Vogue. “The endocrinologist basically had this interview with Alex, and Alex was nervous with his answers, because he’s just a nervous kid in general, and the endocrinologist said he’s not ready. Then he went on this thing about how blockers could cause more harm than good and that he wouldn’t have any problem with hormones if he knew that Alex were more, I guess, set in being transgender… Despite what the gender specialist had told him, he said that Alex could start hormones at [age] 18.”

But it was one particular heartbreaking conversation sparked by news coverage of Trump’s anti-trans rule that alarmed Sarah. “He asked does that mean if [he needs] an ambulance, because he does have a lot of health issues, does that mean that they can just say no to [him],” she recounted. Sarah told him of the story of Tyra Hunter, a Black trans woman from Washington, D.C., who was denied treatment years ago when an EMT discovered that she was trans, only to later die at the hospital. “But I assured him that if he did need something like and they seemed like they weren’t going to help him, that I would do anything to make sure that didn’t happen to him. But because he’s 12, that’s kind of a scary question, and a sad question actually, to come from someone so young.”

*Names have been changed