Suzanne Wheeler and her wife do not want to leave the Kansas City area with their eight adult children and seven grandchildren. They do not want to abandon their friends, community, and support system.
But they are still making plans.
The middle-aged transgender couple has already purchased property in Portugal, where transgender rights are better protected. And they are prepared to go if necessary.
“I don’t want to leave my country,” said Wheeler, a retired United States Army colonel. “Throughout my life, I have supported and defended the United States Constitution. But given our current situation, I may have to.”
Kansas City’s transgender community is sandwiched between two states where Republican-controlled legislatures have prioritized restricting transgender health care and other rights. Now that President Donald Trump has returned to the White House, an onslaught of executive orders is expected, potentially limiting transgender rights and access to care across the country.
Members of Kansas City’s transgender community expressed concern about growing health-care restrictions, including for transgender adults, as well as new rules that could prevent them from having driver’s licenses and passports that accurately reflect their gender, putting their safety at risk.
“It’s a really tough environment to be trans or raising trans kids these days,” said Shira Berkowitz, senior director of public policy at PROMO, a Missouri LGBTQ rights organization.
According to them, the wave of legislation and other policies appears to be a deliberate push for “the erasure of transgender people from society.”
Proposed laws and new laws
According to the nonprofit Movement Advancement Project, less than 4% of Missouri adults identify as LGBTQ, with an even smaller percentage identifying as transgender. (It accounts for only 0.5% of the population nationwide.) However, 56 bills introduced in the Missouri General Assembly this year would address some aspect of transgender life.
That is more than in any other state except Texas, where 66 bills aimed at the trans community were introduced, according to a tally kept by journalist Erin Reed, who writes about transgender issues on her blog Erin in the Morning.
The Missouri bills are wide-ranging, including:
- Driver’s license restrictions that require using a person’s gender assigned at birth.
- Bathroom bans that dictate which bathrooms transgender people are allowed to use in the state.
- Constitutional amendments that outlaw gender-affirming care for minors along with abortion.
- And one bill , which defines “sex” only as “an individual’s reproductive biology at birth,” threatening protections against discrimination for transgender people.
The state’s extensive legislative agenda also includes several bills aimed primarily at extending Missouri’s ban on gender-affirming care for people under the age of 18 and maintaining a ban on transgender youth participating in sports for teams that match their gender identity. Both of these laws were passed in 2023 but are set to expire in 2027.
Lawmakers who support restrictions on gender-affirming care, such as puberty blockers, hormone replacement therapy, and surgeries, argue that children may be irreparably harmed by treatments and later regret receiving them.
However, the medical community generally agrees that gender blockers, the most common medical treatment for children, simply delay puberty and do not cause permanent change. Surgery is extremely rare among children under the age of 18.
In Kansas, five bills addressing transgender issues were introduced this year. The major bill, which prohibits gender-affirming care for Kansans under the age of 18, passed on February 18 over Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto.
The Kansas bill prohibits recommended medical treatments and social transitioning, which critics argue may prevent teachers from using a student’s preferred pronouns in class.
If the Kansas ban is upheld in court, it is expected to go into effect soon, though people who are currently receiving care have until 2026 to discontinue it. Because of the new law, Kansas City families with transgender children will most likely look for care in other states where it is legal.
However, the number of such states is decreasing. Twenty-seven states have prohibited gender-affirming care for minors, so providers may face long wait times. If the White House has its way, access may be further restricted.
Trump issued an executive order in January that aimed to limit federal funding for care for people under the age of 19. The order, which has been temporarily blocked in federal court, has already caused some providers in states where care is still legal to discontinue it.
According to Cait Smith, director of LGBTQI+ policy at the Center for American Progress, laws and regulations are frequently written to be so confusing or cumbersome that insurers and providers simply give in.
“They feel hard to implement,” Smith said.
That’s what happened with Missouri’s 2023 law, which included a grandfather clause that allows minors who are already receiving care to continue. However, instead of determining which patients were eligible and which were not, gender care providers relocated across state lines or discontinued care entirely.
That is one way lawmakers and politicians might try to put an end to adult care, Smith said.
Another option is to restrict funding and impose burdensome requirements that are costly and difficult to implement. This could include requiring clinics to have hallways of a certain width or forcing patients to go to a clinic every time they need a hormone treatment rather than taking it from home.
“It could be very similar to attempts to curtail access to abortion care,” Mr. Smith said.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey issued a broad rule in 2023 that would have prohibited all gender-affirming care for adults and children. Bailey withdrew the order after a judge blocked it and the Missouri legislature passed the minor-care ban.
Life-saving care isn’t an option
Gender dysphoria is a medical diagnosis that describes the psychological distress that transgender people may experience. Major medical organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, agree that care is medically necessary and can save lives.
According to a Williams Institute study from 2023, 42% of transgender adults in the United States have attempted suicide, and 81% have considered it.
And the Trevor Project, a national organization that provides mental health services to LGBTQ youth, discovered a 72% increase in suicide attempts among trans and nonbinary youth between 2018 and 2022, a time when 19 states, including Missouri and Kansas, passed anti-transgender legislation.
Calls and texts to the Trevor Project’s crisis line increased by 700% the day after the November general election, and have seen “significant increases” since Inauguration Day.
Hazel Krebs, a transgender author and speaker based in Kansas City, battled substance abuse and mental health issues before transitioning to female at the age of 39. In 2018, she attempted suicide.
Krebs said that being able to transition saved her life. She is happy now, at the age of 43.
“It’s because I’m trans,” she explained. “It’s all because I realized who I am. “It’s all because I get to be myself.”
Giving up gender-affirming care, as some politicians may suggest, would never be an option, she added.
Karen, a mother from Kansas City, stated that her transgender daughter would not be here if she did not receive care. Karen, who asked that only her first name be used to protect her family’s privacy, discovered her now-adult daughter attempting suicide as an adolescent. She was never happy before making the transition.
“She would barely talk,” Karen said. “She would barely engage with anyone or anything.”
Years later, Karen realizes that helping her daughter transition was the only option. However, it was not easy for her when her daughter revealed to her as a teenager that she was transgender.
“It took us many years to wrap our heads around what transgender is,” she told me. “It’s not an easy task. It’s complicated. … When this first happened to us, I prayed, “Lord, what kind of joke is this? What are you doing with me? “What am I supposed to do?”
Karen saw her daughter, now 25, take her first selfie after gender-affirming surgery.
“That’s when we knew,” she explained.
Words do damage: mental health worries
The numerous bills and threats to gender-affirming care are harmful to transgender people who have fought to be who they are, according to James Moran, director of education and public relations at Our Spot KC, a nonprofit that provides housing and other services to the LGBTQ community.
Moran stated that the potential damage extends beyond the laws and executive orders that go into effect. The constant din of debate over transgender people’s right to exist causes real harm. Moran added that it amplifies fear and misunderstanding.
“That makes it easier to demonize and dehumanize,” Moran told reporters.
Krebs said she used to feel pretty safe walking around Kansas City, where the City Council approved a resolution in 2023 designating the city as a safe haven for gender-affirming healthcare. But things have changed since the election.
“My geographic circle has shrunk quite a bit,” she told me.
At the same time, she sees more non-transgender people showing support and realizing how much opposition she and other transgender people face. She believes that many people are noticing that the constant mocking of transgender people is intended to create a distraction.
“I have confidence that the populace is smart enough to see that and they’ll say, ‘Stop talking about trans people and start solving the problems,'” Krebs told me.
Krebs claimed she nearly left Kansas when the state changed its ID requirements, forcing her to have a “M” for male on her driver’s license. But she realized that many transgender people couldn’t afford to leave.
“That was a wake-up call that I just need to be here,” she shared. “My personality lends itself to being in front of people. I’m willing to speak with reporters. “There’s not enough of that.”
Karen stated that she and her family are making plans to leave. She has come to believe that making changes in Missouri is too difficult. In a blue state, she hopes to be a guide for people who need to flee a place where the laws have become too restrictive.
“If (Democratic presidential candidate Kamala) Harris had won, we probably would have stayed for a little bit longer,” she was saying. “But I’ve felt for a long time it’s very difficult to fight in Missouri.”
Wheeler stated that she will finally leave Kansas if she cannot obtain health care or if the government forces her to change her gender on her government IDs.
“Those are my personal triggers,” she explained.
She is still hoping they will not happen.
A 20-foot flagpole outside her suburban Kansas home flies the American flag. Wheeler adores the country she has spent her entire career protecting. However, it is becoming a place where she does not feel safe.
“I’m nearly 60,” she said. “I do not want to leave my country. I don’t want to leave my house… People have lost their minds over ‘gender ideology.’ It is not an ideology. We aren’t an ideology. We are people. “Nobody asked for this.”
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