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Connie Kathary is no stranger to road trips. 

It’s the first week of October 2024 when she makes the three-hour drive from Indianapolis to Evansville, Indiana with her mother. Her family owns a business there, so they visit quite often. Plus, it’s fall festival week, which she can’t miss. Two hundred thousand people are gathering on the west side’s Franklin Street for food, games and carnival rides. But for now, Connie settles into a booth at a quiet coffee shop on the east side, compliments the outfit of the woman sitting next to her, and starts from the beginning. 

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“I should probably start talking about the transition part of it; that’s the whole word – that’s the first part of the word. Trans,” she says, earning a chuckle from her mother. 

Three-and-a-half years ago, at age 14, Connie, who was assigned male at birth, realized she was a girl. Her parents, fully supportive of her decision to transition, took her to her primary doctor for gender-affirming care. But due to the hospital’s religious-based policies, she was unable to obtain it there. The pediatrician referred Connie to a clinic in Indianapolis, where she had to wait a year to start her treatment. Finally, she began feminizing hormone therapy – spironolactone and estrogen. 

But suddenly, three months into treatment, Indiana passed Senate Bill 480, a law prohibiting gender transition procedures and treatments for minors, even with parental permission. 

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Connie and her family tried to fight the bill. They rallied at the Statehouse and anxiously watched for updates in a lawsuit brought by the ACLU of Indiana seeking to overturn the law. In June 2023, a judge issued a temporary injunction that blocked the law taking effect, giving them a brief sense of relief. But in February 2024, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals lifted the injunction, a decision that sent the Katharys scrambling to find a way to continue Connie’s care. 

Like many others, Connie and her family crossed state lines into Illinois — a shield state that passed a law in 2023 protecting practitioners providing, and patients seeking, gender-affirming care for minors, even those coming from states that prohibit it. Still, it hasn’t been easy. They’ve had to drive six-plus hours roundtrip for doctors’ appointments and rely on a network of friends and family to pick up her prescriptions from Illinois pharmacies. 

“A majority of my family is accepting and they love me,” Connie, then 17, said, recounting her difficult journey. “But not all people have that. And the way that this law is made, there’s going to be blood on their hands. There’s probably already — and I think…they’re evil for that.” 

A tale of two states

Indiana is among 26 states that have outlawed youth gender-affirming care statewide since 2021. Illinois, surrounded by states where minors can’t receive that care, has become a critical refuge for those seeking treatment. 

Mallory Klocke, director of gender-affirming hormone therapy at Planned Parenthood of Illinois, a reproductive health care provider, said the organization has seen an increase of transgender youth traveling from out of state. “As a program director, I review all the records of people who have already initiated care and are transferring their care to us,” Klocke said. “So I’ve definitely seen lots of people coming in from Indiana (and) people as far as Texas or Florida.”

A spokesperson for Planned Parenthood said around 6% of their gender-affirming patients comes from out of state, seeking estrogen and testosterone therapy, a treatment for gender dysphoria. As defined by Mayo Clinic, gender dysphoria is “a feeling of distress that can happen when a person’s gender identity differs from the sex assigned at birth.” A diagnosis does not come from avoiding typical gender roles, but rather it focuses on “feelings of distress due to a strong, lasting desire to be another gender.” 

From 2017 through 2021, 121,882 children ages 6 to 17 in the U.S. were diagnosed with gender dysphoria, according to a research analysis by Reuters Investigates and Komodo Health Inc. That’s less than 0.1% of the nation’s total population, yet over half of Midwestern states have passed bans on medical practice for transgender youth in recent years, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an independent, nonprofit think tank. Of the five states that have not, Illinois and Minnesota are the only states to offer a “shield law” protecting access to care. This makes Illinois the safest option for most Midwesterners, and for transgender youth living in the south — where care is banned in all but Virginia — the closest. 

To Charles Kolesar, a clinical director at CHOICES Center for Reproductive Health, open access in Illinois is crucial. CHOICES, which offers gender-affirming care to transgender people ages 16 and up, opened in Memphis, Tennessee in 1974 and expanded to Carbondale, Illinois in 2022. For older adolescents, the Carbondale clinic is now their only option. Tennessee banned health care workers from providing hormones, puberty blockers and other treatments to trans youth in 2023 with the passage of Senate Bill 1, which is currently being challenged in the Supreme Court. 

“For whatever reason, places like Tennessee, it’s like their top agenda is to shut down gender-affirming care,” Kolesar said. “I mean, it’s a bizarre fixation, but yeah, I think it’s critical for places like Illinois to have the access so people can receive the care they need.” 

Similar to Tennessee, Indiana prohibits medical practitioners from providing gender-affirming health care to minors and referring minors to other practitioners. Nadine McSpadden, director of advocacy and general counsel at IYG, a nonprofit organization that serves LGBTQ+ youth and young adults in Indiana, said the way the bill passed was “really unfortunate.” Initially, a grandfather clause left those receiving treatment with six months to continue treatment, but when the injunction was lifted, so was the clause. 

“Overnight, all of the families were suddenly without any medical provider in the state of Indiana able to either offer them any care or refer them to anyone in another state,” McSpadden said. “So it actually left everyone in a worse position than they would have been under the original law. And because the law not only prevents families from receiving this treatment, it also prevents doctors in Indiana referring patients and their families to other out of state providers. So the families kind of have to figure this out on their own.” 

Since January 2023, Illinois has protected those seeking or providing reproductive health care with House Bill 4664, also known as the Patient and Provider Protection Act (PAPPA). Edwin Yohnka, director of communications and public policy at ACLU of Illinois, said it was “designed to ensure that no one who is providing lawful health care in Illinois is subject to punishment as a result of having provided that care.” 

“As we see, other states not only implement these bans but then also try to enforce their bans from their state in Illinois,” Yohnka said. 

PAPPA was sponsored by 18 Senate members and 44 House Representatives, including 14th District Rep. Kelly Cassidy. 

“What it does, fundamentally, is ensure, in multiple ways, that patients and providers have as many protections as we can craft from overreach by states with bans,” Cassidy said in an interview in December. “So making sure that no ban state can affect providers’ licensure here in Illinois. We’ve made very clear that abortion care and gender-affirming care are lawful health care in the state of Illinois, and that that will be respected, making sure that people are protected when they come here to seek care.” 

Cassidy is a long-term advocate for LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights. Her mother had to cross state lines to give birth to her. Her partner is nonbinary. She’s the only openly gay member of her chamber. These experiences made supporting the bill a no-brainer, she said. 

“That was a fight that I was not going to back away from,” she said. 

Cassidy said the law ensures there is Medicaid coverage of gender-affirming care; prevents Illinois from participating in investigations when other states seek to penalize those who are traveling to access health care; and protects the Illinois licensure of medical professionals who are dually licensed.

Cassidy feels it’s important that decisions impacting bodily autonomy are made without governmental interference. “Ultimately, I have never had a lawmaker question whether I needed my two heart surgeries,” she said. “They saved my life, and so did my abortion, but I’ve had to justify that.” She added, “I just left the swearing-in of the first trans countywide elected official. Her medication saved her life. Those are all life-saving medications. It’s really that simple.” 

In the small, rural college town of Carbondale, Illinois, a bodily autonomy ordinance protects autonomous medical decisions, including gender-affirming care. “It’s expressly written…that anyone in the city of Carbondale who is caught working with some law enforcement agency attempting to extradite someone for coming here to exercise their right to health care, they’ll be held liable,” said Carbondale City Councilmember Clare Killman. “The individual who is cooperating with an outside law enforcement agency will be held liable. And no member of Carbondale City staff, Carbondale Police Department included, is authorized to comply with, say, an extradition order.” 

Killman is the first openly transgender person to be elected to a city council in Illinois. Having lived in Carbondale ever since fleeing a dire situation in Missouri at 17 years old, she considers herself an “interstate refugee.” 

“It’s not like I can come here and be declared a refugee and seek asylum, but Carbondale essentially did that for me, where they opened their arms and they integrated me, and I was able to build a life here,” she said. 

Like Cassidy, Killman questions whether state and federal authorities should be able to override an individual’s medical care decisions. She praises Illinois for deferring that right to the individual, regardless of what is being done at a national level. 

“Illinois affirms your right to own your body, and so instead of kicking something back to the states, instead of the federal government mandating one way or the other, Illinois is giving people the choice,” she said. “They’re not sending it back to themselves to regulate. They’re giving a choice to people.” 

While Connie was able to continue her care in Illinois, she knows not every young person in Indiana comes from a family that is supportive of their desire to transition, or has the means to travel out of state. She worries about what it means for them.

“If I didn’t transition, I’m not even sure I would still be here,” Connie said. “There is probably a universe out there where I didn’t transition, which, I don’t want to think about it, but that’s the thing — you have to.” 

A lengthy process 

Following the passage of Indiana’s State Bill 480, primary sponsor Sen. Tyler Johnson issued the following statement: “Since these procedures have irreversible and life-altering effects, it is appropriate and necessary for our state to make sure these procedures are performed only on adults who can make the decisions on their own behalf.” But McSpadden, who works with transgender youth at IYG, said these decisions don’t just happen overnight. 

“There’s always a team in place,” she said. “So there’s parents or caregivers, there’s medical providers, and there’s almost always also a therapist who are working together in conjunction, usually over the course of years before you get to a point of these medical interventions…There is a team in place that makes these decisions very carefully and thoughtfully.” 

Additionally, research shows that just a small percentage of patients regret gender-affirming care. A longitudinal study published in the American Academy of Pediatrics’ journal found that around 94% of participants remained consistent in their gender identity five years after their initial social transitions. For gender-affirming surgery — a procedure that is much more intensive than hormone therapy and is not permitted to minors in any states except in some severe cases of gender dysphoria, according to the Human Rights Campaign — the rates are even lower. A study published in the JAMA Network found that less than 1% of transgender minors underwent gender-affirming surgical procedures. A 2022 survey of over 90,000 trans people found that just 2% of respondents ages 18 and above were less satisfied after surgery, while 94% were more satisfied.

Kolesar said that at CHOICES, young clients are reviewed for gender dysphoria and asked for a letter of support from a mental health provider. “That was mostly just to help ensure that people are going to get adequate support in what they need as adolescents,” he said.  

For Connie, the process of receiving care was tedious. “To be honest, I don’t even remember a lot of the details, because in my mind, it’s like — this is the past,” she said. “I don’t know. Part of me doesn’t really like to think about the before times, really. Part of me just views that as, like, a separate entity sometimes.”

What Connie does remember, however, is the unwavering support of her family. “I was taken to pride parades all the time…We had a lot of gay friends in our family, and I knew it was very accepting, so there wasn’t really much fear of coming out,” she said. “It was a pretty typical coming out story of an accepting family.” 

The “typical story,” she said, was taking her mother on a walk. It was June 2021 — she laughs at the irony of the month she chose — and she was nervous, despite being certain that her mother would accept her. It took her 20 minutes to work up the courage, but she eventually found the words. 

“I walked her outside. We were just talking about stuff, and I told her, ‘Yep, I’m a girl.’ And she was very accepting.” With a laugh, Connie added, “At first, I was a bit upset, because she didn’t give me, like, the fanfare, because I’ve always been a real attention whore.” 

With her mom, Julia, and her dad, Greg, in her corner, Connie took the first step in her transition journey: changing her name and gender in the legal system. While Julia was able to help get the information changed at Connie’s school district quickly, it took over a year for everything to be legally changed.

In the months before the hearing, Connie elected to start attending therapy. Julia noted that this was not required, but helped make the legal process run smoother. “Sometimes a county that may not be as accepting as (our) county is, the judge might ask for a letter from a therapist,” she said. “Kind of like, ‘Prove to me that you’re not just changing anything for the heck of it’ or whatever. People do think that. They think…that you just get on a whim.” 

It was after her name was changed in the legal system that Connie decided to pursue gender-affirming hormone therapy. She recalls facing a lot of skepticism during this time. 

“You have to go through a few different doctors, where they can be like, ‘Are you sure?’ ‘Are you sure you’re sure?’ ‘Are you sure?’ ‘You sure?’” she said.  

While a statewide ban was not in place at the time, Connie still faced limited options, as discretion of care was left to the health systems. Julia said that Connie’s pediatrician – albeit supportive – could not prescribe medications due to the hospital’s Catholic policies. 

“I never felt judged by her. I don’t think Connie felt judged by her. But the system she works in wouldn’t allow her even before it was illegal to do that, and so she referred us. That’s how we ended up with Riley (Children’s Hospital),” she said.  

Connie received treatment from Riley Children’s Hospital’s Gender Health Program based at Indiana University Health. Because few hospitals offered this care at the time, Connie waited a year to get an appointment with the program. When the time finally came, she was able to receive medication the same day.

“It’s really about the bureaucratic hoops you have to jump through, because it could really be so easy,” Connie said. “I’m not saying it should be say it and then immediately get a prescription…I’m just saying it shouldn’t be that hard.”  

Connie spent a year receiving gender-affirming hormone therapy, while the fight against transgender care in Indiana continued to unfold. 

A long haul 

In March 2024, Julia and Greg called out of work, signed Connie out of school, and drove from Indianapolis to Flossmoor, Illinois, a town just 30 minutes south of Chicago. Connie spent the car ride watching a season of “Invincible” and wishing for a visit to Six Flags. The real purpose of the trip, however, was a stop at Planned Parenthood to meet with a gender-affirming care specialist.  

On Feb. 28, the Katharys received a heartbreaking email from a member of the ACLU of Indiana: “You may have heard that we argued the case in the Seventh Circuit on February 16 and yesterday the Court issued the attached order which stays the preliminary injunction. This means that even though the Court has not yet issued an opinion, the law is back in effect today and the care can no longer be provided in Indiana.” 

The ACLU sent a motion asking the court to reconsider the stay and vacate it, but according to the email, the organization was not hopeful. Julia said she signed Connie up with Planned Parenthood of Illinois’ online patient portal that very day. She was running low on medication and would need a refill soon. The turnaround was faster this time, thanks to records from Riley being available to transfer. Her appointment — the soonest they could get her in — was March 14. 

“I think the thing that makes me mad about the whole thing is, like, as a taxpayer in Indiana — me and Greg both — we pay our taxes here in Indiana, we work here in Indiana,” Julia said. “We had to take time off of work, we had to take our child out of school, we were told we can’t parent our child and make health care decisions for her without driving outside the state.” 

Still, they made sure to enjoy themselves on the trip. 

“Besides the fact that I really should not have had to do that, it was a really fun day in my mind,” Connie said. “The part of me that has to think about this stuff, is like, ‘I shouldn’t have had to do that.’ Then the part of me that just wants to be a kid is like, ‘Yeah, no school, driving up to Chicago, all right!’” 

For many families, traveling out of state is no easy feat. McSpadden said it can be very expensive. “You have to have a working vehicle. You have to be able to pay the gas money. You have to be able to take time off of work. You have to be able to take your child out of school. You might have to drive far enough that you have to pay for a hotel overnight, and then, of course, there’s potentially an insurance issue. Are you insured at all? If you are insured, is your insurance going to cover this out-of-state provider and whatever treatment it is you’re going to be receiving…So it’s becoming a very cost-prohibitive exercise for a lot of these families to provide what is truly life-saving care for their kids,” she said.  

Klocke said Planned Parenthood offers resources to help those who are traveling to its clinics. “We have a program — a practical support or logistical support program — to help people with those barriers. So we — if people qualify — can help support with, like, a hotel to stay in, with gas or flight money, food for while people are traveling.” 

The visits can also be frequent. Kolesar said patients at CHOICES come in around every three months when they first start receiving care. “When you initiate hormone therapy, people have to have lab work,” he said. “They have to be monitored typically for liver, kidney function, that kind of stuff…We have to monitor their levels of their hormones. So it’s a big commitment for parents to have to follow through and support their child that way, especially when they’re having to travel and all the expense of traveling and taking time off work and that kind of thing.” 

McSpadden said IYG is partnered with the Trans Youth Emergency Project, a national organization that is working to provide resources such as travel grants to families of transgender youth. She also noted these bans have much more than just a financial impact. 

“It’s hard to even describe how emotionally taxing it is for these youth and their families to feel like your own state government has such low value and esteem for your well-being that they would make it this hard for you to get the basic medical care that you need to just live your life,” McSpadden said. “Youth feel scared and isolated and stigmatized, and their parents feel, I think, a little bit panicked about how they’re going to be able to continue caring for their kids in the way that they feel like they need to as parents, because it’s becoming so challenging in so many ways.” 

A list of risks

Many people consider gender-affirming care to be life-saving care. Kolesar said he was representing CHOICES at a health fair when a woman approached him and gave him a hug. 

“She said, ‘the care that you provided my child saved their life.’ They are now functioning, they’re comfortable, they’re happy,” he said. “And they felt like if they didn’t receive that gender-affirming care, that they would have more mental health issues, and even, you know, risk of suicide. So I think the care that we provide really does help to save lives, it really does.” 

A recent study published in Nature Human Behavior found that anti-transgender state laws led to an increase of suicide attempts among transgender and nonbinary youth. The study, which surveyed 61,000 transgender and nonbinary youth and controlled variables such as state differences, race and age, found that suicide attempt rates increased by up to 72% among those aged 13 to 17 living in states with anti-trans bans compared to those without.

“Gender-affirming care is simply care that’s provided in a sensitive and empathetic way that recognizes a person’s gender identity,” Yohnka of the Illinois ACLU said. Klocke, who works in both administration and clinics at Planned Parenthood, said denying this care can impact one’s overall well-being. 

“For a lot of trans and nonbinary people, being on hormone therapy is part of how they’re able to feel good in life,” they said. “Sometimes, if people have, like, medical conditions like high blood pressure or diabetes or things like that, if people feel more at home in their bodies, they’re able to manage their other medical conditions more easily and with more confidence than they might otherwise. And so stopping those hormones for young people risks people’s well being, and oftentimes, it can risk their lives. And that’s something that we have seen time and time again.” 

According to The Trevor Project National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health 2021, over half of trans and nonbinary youth considered attempting suicide in 2021. This could be due to a lack of treatment and support for gender dysphoria, which according to Mayo Clinic, places those affected “at higher risk of thinking about or attempting suicide.” 

Connie received gender-affirming hormone therapy for around a year before Indiana outlawed it. Klocke said if patients abruptly stop receiving treatment, it can be “really, really rough.” 

“When you change your hormone levels, that can be challenging,” they said. “Ask anybody who has gone through puberty if hormonal shifts affect their mood, and they will probably tell you yes. And when that’s not an active choice by a person, that can be even harder.” 

Hormone therapy can also benefit underlying conditions, thus posing physical risks when halted. Klocke said, “If somebody has a history of anemia and getting rid of really heavy periods, for example, (and) using testosterone was part of like managing their anemia, that can be a risk, or their anemia returning and needing to use other ways to address that.” 

Indiana’s law, which “prohibits a physician or other practitioner from…aiding or abetting another physician or practitioner in the provision of gender transition procedures to a minor” prevents parents such as Beth and Nathaniel Clawson – plaintiffs in the lawsuit ACLU of Indiana filed against the state of Indiana – from communicating effectively with all medical professionals involved in their child’s care.

Their daughter, a minor child referred to as K.C. in the lawsuit, has Type 1 diabetes. In a December press conference with the ACLU of Indiana, Beth Clawson discussed how the ambiguous language has created a fear of repercussions and a threat to their daughter’s health.

“Puberty plays a huge role in the way your body receives and reacts to insulin,” she said. “And I am terrified to tell the doctors that my daughter is on estrogen even though…I can see how resistant she’s becoming to her insulin, and I really need the doctors help to help me figure out the best way to combat that resistance in her body and it’s impossible really for me to figure it out by myself but I don’t want to get my doctors in trouble. I don’t know. Is it gender-affirming care knowing that she is just on the medicine? Is it aiding and abetting if they just ignore it and let her be on it? Like, is there a place that they’re supposed to note this? And if they don’t note this are they gonna get in trouble? My fear is now not only taking care of my child but keeping her medical providers who are very important to us safe.”

A nationwide fight

Indiana Rep. Chris Campbell is challenging the broad language of Senate Bill 480. At the ACLU Indiana press conference, Campbell proposed repealing the “aid and abet” language in Indiana’s ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth. 

“The language in our law is so broad that it prohibits doctors from all of the following: referring patients out of state to other providers, communicating with patients about the care they are receiving out of state or even communicating with the out-of-state doctor providing them with the services,” Campbell said. “The outcome is reduced level of care for the patient being seen by multiple providers who can’t communicate with each other about the care that they’re providing.”

Campbell said she disapproves of the law as a whole, but since the Supreme Court is considering whether a similar Tennessee law is a violation of the Equal Protection Clause, the bill she will offer “is only going to address that ‘aid and abet’ language.” A decision for the case, Skrmetti v. U.S., which will set a foundation for how transgender issues are viewed under the Constitution, is expected in June 2025. 

“We know many families are accessing this necessary care out of state,” Campbell said. “The ‘aid and abet’ provisions puts health at risk in a way that undercuts basic medical practice when multiple providers are involved.”  

Beth Clawson said in order to find medication and providers for her daughter, they’ve had to rely on “word of mouth” from other Indiana families with trans youth. “We have a child that transitioned eight years ago socially and this is a new journey for us,” she said. “And even though we’ve been doing it for a long time, we have lots of questions. The questions don’t stop. And the people that I would like to ask questions to are (her) pediatrician and her endocrinologist here in Indiana and we just can’t do that.”

Nathaniel Clawson said they have to take their daughter “all the way to Boston” for care. “Our gender-affirming health care provider in Boston can’t talk to my daughter’s pediatrician, and with that, it has been so difficult to go through and just figure out what are all the next steps,” he said.

When asked if any of K.C.’s medical providers in Indiana have tried to avoid the topic of gender-affirming health care, Beth Clawson said “it’s as if it doesn’t exist.” She attends her appointments as usual, but “that part of her care is just completely off the chopping block.” 

“It’s not even acknowledged,” she said. “It’s not talked about by the doctor, by us, by the nurses – like my child doesn’t want to, you know, mention anything because she doesn’t want to get her doctors in trouble; she doesn’t want to get in trouble.” 

To Campbell, communication regarding a child’s medical care is “critical to making sure that child is healthy.” Repealing the “aid and abet” language would “remove that barrier” set by the current law and prevent “any sort of other restrictions for when a doctor is communicating about their patient,” she said.  

Connie turned 18 in December, so the days of traveling to Illinois are in the rear-view mirror now. But she’s not entirely out of the woods. With a new administration in office, the future for transgender care is more uncertain than ever. 

On Inauguration Day, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that the federal government will recognize only two sexes — male and female — citing that gender identity “does not provide a meaningful basis for identification.” On Jan. 27, he signed an executive order directing a revision of the Pentagon’s policy on transgender troops, writing that the “troop readiness” policy “is inconsistent with the medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals with gender dysphoria.” And on Jan. 28, he signed an executive order to defund youth gender-affirming care in the federal government. 

The order, titled “Protecting Children From Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” will only further restrict minors, which the bill identifies as under 19, from receiving care. The order directs the government to “not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called ‘transition’ of a child from one sex to another” as well as “rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures.” 

In a Jan. 31 interview, Rep. Cassidy said that this order has not brought about any current changes in Illinois. “I think that’s the most important thing people need to know. His signature on that paper changed nothing (in) regard to access to care in Illinois today or tomorrow,” she said.

Trump’s promises to roll back transgender health care were a central focus in his presidential campaign, which is why the ACLU of Illinois was preparing for the restrictions even before he was in office. 

“The first strategy will be to enforce the law in Illinois,” Yohnka said in November. “And you know, for us and our colleagues around the country and at national, (we) will look at other litigation strategies, other advocacy strategies to challenge that. The idea that a president, by some sort of executive order or fiat, can deny large swaths of people health care, legitimate health care, for no reason other than it’s politically expedient…I think it’s not something that we’re going to sit by and just accept, you know, we’re going to continue to challenge that.”

Cassidy said the state is currently working to determine what Trump’s order entails. “We have to interpret these executive orders and determine exactly where they’re going to hit, and that will then tell us what we need to protect,” she said. “Ultimately, Illinois law – it’s about as strong as it can be nationwide, and it’s also not been tested. So we’re bracing for that, but we’re bracing for it with a solid litigation strategy and the belief that we can slow the harms, we can minimize the harms.”

One week later, Trump signed an executive order titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.” The order, which prohibits transgender women from participating in women’s sports, is his fourth and latest order targeting the transgender community. 

A glimpse forward 

Connie calls in from her home in Indianapolis. It’s a snowy January morning, two weeks after her birthday and the last day before the spring semester begins. “I mean I’m glad I don’t have to go to Illinois anymore for my meds,” she says when asked how it feels to be 18. “But – I don’t know – I mean, yeah. It’s fine.” 

For now, Connie is focusing on her senior year of high school. Senioritis isn’t easy, but she said she’s looking forward to finishing it out and choosing from her long list of college offers. She’s proud to be open and give her voice to this cause, but she longs for a day that she’ll be interviewed for more than just her gender identity – perhaps for her creative writing skills, which she plans to study. 

“I’m thinking…maybe get a degree for my writing, and try to go from there,” she said. “Maybe I’ll work at my parents’ place, or maybe I’ll try to get out and do something creatively.” 

It’s been four months, but her words from that day in the coffee shop remain consistent. 

“I really don’t think I should have to be a model or like a symbol. I don’t want to be that. I just want to, you know, live my life.” 

Carly Gist is a journalism student at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. This story was produced for Capitol News Illinois through the Saluki Local Reporting Lab, supported by grant funding from the Pulitzer Center and the Illinois Press Foundation.

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