A swath of adjoining states in the South now ban transition-related care for minors, forcing families of trans youth to travel long distances for care.
ike any family, Katie and her son Ray had their road trip staples. They always packed sour peach candy. They talked more than they listened to music, and they played a game they called Nature. Anyone who spotted an animal racked up points, though the exact number depended on the species and an in-the-moment car vote.
Initially, Katie didn’t know where to go. Nearly every state within 700 miles had banned gender-affirming care for minors, and a trip to Illinois would have taken three days. She didn’t have vacation time or hotel money to spare, so the Midwest was out. The best option, she decided, was a tenuous one.
Katie understood some Mississippians might be slow to accept trans people. She hadn’t wanted to believe Ray at first, and her heart broke when he first cut his hip-length blonde hair to his chin. But she’d listened to him, and she’d trusted his doctors, and she’d seen the difference the care made in his life.Ray holds vials of testosterone. Before Ray came out, the physical world pained him. He coughed every two minutes, and he blinked nonstop.
It didn’t take insurance, and it didn’t offer therapy or bone density scans like the hospital had, but the nurse practitioners there could write hormone prescriptions, so Ray and his dad drove down one Monday last November, and Katie met them at the clinic. Katie had planned to do the noon telehealth appointment in the pharmacy parking lot, but now they needed a new plan. She looked out the window. She saw a long stretch of pine trees and little else. The highway lacked even a good shoulder.
now make up 20 percent of her caseload. Still, Lowell is beholden to state laws, so she couldn’t see Ray — even virtually — if he was physically in Mississippi. “It’s asking me for your vital signs,” she told Ray. “I have a stethoscope. I could listen to your heart. I’m just going to guess the others.”She tried to enter his height and weight, 5-foot-6 and 135 pounds, but the app screen went blank.She held her phone out the window, but the service didn’t improve. Katie clicked over and over again, and at 12:04, Lowell’s face flickered into view.“I think our connection isn’t great,” Lowell said.
Lowell asked how Ray felt on that dose, and he flashed a thumbs-up. His voice was deep, and he’d grown a rough blonde stubble, but he hoped to get labs done so he could know how his testosterone levels looked. He’d had an appointment scheduled for March, but after the law passed, the nurse practitioners at the new clinic explained that they weren’t even allowed to talk about gender-affirming care.
Lowell asked Ray a string of questions about his medical history, then she suggested they pause the appointment so she could submit the prescription, and Katie could call Walgreens to see if there would be any issues. Ray had legally changed his name two years earlier, but his dad hadn’t been able to update his health insurance yet.
Ray slumped in his seat, and Katie thumbed through her wallet, as if one of the cards might present an answer.“I found a GoodRx coupon,” the doctor said. “I’m looking here. It’ll cost you $76.” Katie hadn’t slept more than a few hours at a time since they’d decided, but she didn’t see another way. She couldn’t keep Ray in a state whose leaders legislated against him.The country store sold lunch, so they went inside. Katie ordered a barbecue sandwich with a Diet Coke, and Ray chose pimento cheese and a bottle of sweet tea. No one else was around, but Katie craned her neck, vigilant, as they sat at a table with a blue-checked cloth.
Katie worried she didn’t have much time left to be his mother, so she used the drive to dispense advice. They passed a catfish restaurant and a tractor supply store, then the Walgreens appeared around a corner.
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