21 hours Ago By Kristen Schorsch
Editor’s note: This story discusses suicide and attempted suicide. He’s been on this journey for four years. Once a week, the 17-year-old transgender boy injects testosterone into his body.
He’s already frozen his eggs in case he wants to have his own biological children one day. He’s talked with his parents, his psychologist, and says he knew he was ready. For this teen, the next logical step was almost here: surgery to remove the breast tissue he was born with.
“Getting this treatment isn’t fixing something that’s wrong with me,” says the teen, who lives in the Chicago suburbs and asked that his name not be used to protect his privacy and safety. “It’s just helping me grow more into who I want to be and who I can feel most comfortable existing as.” But as his mom, Jane, waited for a call to schedule the surgery at Ann & Robert H.
Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago, she received a voicemail from the hospital, and before she even listened to it, she knew what they would say — the surgery wouldn’t happen. She had read on social media that Lurie would no longer perform gender care surgeries for youth younger than 19 in the wake of an executive order from Republican President Donald Trump. “We are being threatened,” Jane says.
“The trans community is being threatened and parents are being threatened. ..
. We will do what we need to do to take care of our children.” Her son says he feels hurt and confused.
He says doctors told him they would fight as hard as they legally could to support him. But then hospital leaders decided to cancel surgical appointments and not schedule new ones. “I know that it’s not like a personal thing, like they didn’t look at me directly and go, ‘Yeah, you don’t deserve that.
’ But it kind of feels like it sometimes, especially when a lot of what the sentiment is, has been, in general, towards trans people in society,” the teen says. In the two weeks since Lurie paused surgeries for transgender youth, WBEZ has spoken with 10 patients or their parents about what it means for their lives. They described their disappointment, their loss of hope for one day having a procedure, and their anger that this is coming now, after they already feel threatened and marginalized by hateful rhetoric around the country.
Jane and David are helping their transgender teenage son find gender-affirming medical care, on Feb. 18, 2025. Manuel Martinez/WBEZ One 16-year-old boy who lives in Chicago says he feels betrayed that his double mastectomy surgery scheduled at Lurie was canceled.
He has been binding his chest for more than five years, causing rib and back pain. He has to choose each day whether he wants to fully pass as male, or not be in pain. He avoids sports because he can’t breathe as well when he’s binding.
He says much of his dysphoria is centered on having breasts. Lurie deemed his surgery “medically necessary,” according to medical documents his family shared. “Lurie’s decision set a precedent not only for other care providers but also for their patients,” says the boy, who asked WBEZ not to name him to protect his safety and privacy.
“They have established that they are no longer the safe haven they have claimed to be for so many years.” Some patients were referred to Northwestern Memorial Hospital near downtown Chicago for surgery, only to have those appointments canceled. A Northwestern spokesman did not respond to questions.
Other parents whose children are receiving other types of transgender medical care at Lurie, such as hormone therapy, worry what the hospital might stop providing next. “If we can’t get estrogen in a year, what do we do?” says the mother of a 15-year-old transgender girl, who asked not to be named for privacy and safety. “Parents with means are talking about leaving the country.
” In a statement, Dr. Robert Garofalo, founding director of the gender development program at Lurie, says he hears and understands the frustration. “My life’s work has been devoted to these children, adolescents, and their families,” Garofalo says.
“As someone who has spent his entire career at Lurie Children’s, I can assure you these kids and these families matter to this institution. It’s important to know that this decision was painstakingly difficult, and it was made amid unprecedented circumstances and external pressures.” It is a decision, Garofalo said Lurie believes, safeguards the majority of services in the gender development program.
Lurie Children’s Hospital paused surgeries for transgender youth after President Donald Trump threatened federal funding. Anthony Vazquez Lurie’s decision came after Trump’s executive order on Jan. 28 threatened to cut federal funding to providers offering gender-affirming medical care.
“Across the country today, medical professionals are maiming and sterilizing a growing number of impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child’s sex through a series of irreversible medical interventions,” Trump wrote in the order. “This dangerous trend will be a stain on our Nation’s history, and it must end.” Gender-affirming care can range from acknowledging a person’s preferred name and pronoun to medical treatment.
Surgery among trans youth is rare , researchers have found. Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul and 14 of his peers in other states vowed to protect access to treatment despite the executive order. He said in Illinois, the Human Rights Act prohibits health care providers from discriminating against patients because of their gender identity.
A spokeswoman for Raoul did not answer questions about how the attorney general is enforcing the law. Still, Lurie and several other hospitals across the country have paused surgeries or other types of gender-affirming treatment, despite two federal judges blocking Trump’s order . Some of the hospitals are concerned the block is only temporary or doesn’t apply to them.
Lurie has one of the oldest gender care programs in the country, and still is offering hormone therapy, puberty blockers and behavioral health services. Providers, patients and research underscore how lifesaving transgender medical care can be, that it can help decrease depression and anxiety , for example. The American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association support access to it.
Transgender youth experience more violence, bullying and suicidal thoughts compared to their peers, according to a 2023 study from the federal Centers for Disease Control & Prevention. One in four students who were transgender or questioned their gender identity attempted suicide in the past year, the study found. The transgender community is small, and families say they feel targeted because of this.
In 2023, around 3% of high school students in the U.S. identified as transgender, and another 2% identified as questioning, the CDC study found.
In the last few years, many states have cracked down on access to youth gender-affirming care, according to KFF, a nonpartisan health policy research organization. Just over half the country — 26 states — limits access. Dr.
Elizabeth Mack, a pediatric critical care physician in South Carolina, has witnessed the consequences of a ban in her state. She recalled treating several children who attempted to or did take their own lives because they couldn’t access treatment. “It’s just one of those things that leaves a mark that I can’t unsee,” Mack says of her experience.
Michelle Vallet and her son, Ben Garcia, spend time in their Chicago home, on Feb. 14, 2025. Pat Nabong/Sun-Times Ben Garcia, 18, a Chicago high school senior, offers a glimpse into life post-surgery.
In 2023, he had a double mastectomy. He says without the medical care he’s received for the last several years, he would be a different person, likely more withdrawn and less confident. “This care has allowed me to be a lot more comfortable in who I am, in the way that I present myself to the world,” Garcia says.
Garcia and his mother, Michelle Vallet, emphasize that his path to surgery was a slow process. Once puberty started, Garcia started to have questions and wanted to explore delaying what was happening to his body. He was around 10 or 11 years old.
Vallet says she reached out to Lurie and booked Garcia his first appointment. It lasted three hours. Vallet says much of the public misunderstands the process, that transgender kids are some of the most scrutinized patients in America.
“I think they feel like trans kids are just one day waking up saying, I want to be a boy,” Vallet says. “They go to the gender clinic, wham bam. That’s not how this care happens.
” Ben Garcia, a Chicago teenager, said without the transgender medical care he’s received for the last several years, he would be a completely different person, likely more withdrawn and less confident, on Feb. 14, 2025. Pat Nabong/Sun-Times She, her son and medical providers at Lurie talked through risks, possible side effects and next steps.
Garcia went through mental health evaluations over multiple appointments before he could take puberty blockers to stop his body from going through changes. Garcia still takes testosterone shots every week and gets check ups at Lurie to see how his levels are doing. He says he’s nervous this care could be in limbo.
Vallet is worried that Lurie might cut all gender care. “It’s heartbreaking to see hospitals as big as Lurie comply in advance,” Vallet says. “It feels like a betrayal.
.. There’s federal dollars on the line, but at a certain point in the environment we’re in, you have to say, ‘No, I’m not doing this.
’” Michelle Vallet and her son Ben Garcia, who receives gender care at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital, are worried his treatment could be in limbo after a federal executive order, on Feb. 14, 2025.
Pat Nabong/Sun-Times Back in the suburbs, the 17-year-old awaiting surgery says the medical care he’s received so far has saved his life — his mother says he’s thriving — and given him hope for his future. Being a transgender teen is a part of his identity. But he’s also a theater teen and an AP student.
He’s working on an Eagle Scout project, and he thinks about studying medicine in college inspired by the medical care he’s received. “We’re already fighting hard to make progress about having people really just understand what being trans is,” he says. “It is a real thing that matters to a lot of people and impacts their lives.
” Kristen Schorsch covers public health and Cook County for WBEZ..
