“I wish people understood that we just want to be able to live our lives. We have as much right to live here as anyone else does.”
Protestors rally at against a ban on gender-affirming care in the Missouri Statehouse.
Under the emergency order, which goes into effect on Thursday and runs through February 2024, patients of all ages would have to meet a long list of requirements to prove that they are fit to start or continue gender-affirming care. Even if they’re legally adults, even if they’ve already been accessing thishealthcare for years, advocates and trans Missourians told BuzzFeed News that the requirements are burdensome, vague, and overly broad.
But hundreds of trans people across the state are still anxiously trying to sort out how to continue receiving gender-affirming care, either in Missouri or a neighboring state. Some are considering moving. In Branson, 28-year-old Torin, who asked to be identified by their first name to protect their privacy, was also told by CoxHealth that they couldn’t get their prescription filled on April 14. As of last week, their provider said she would be able to continue prescribing hormones to patients as long as they are “compliant” with the order.
For healthcare providers in the state, preparing for the restrictions on gender-affirming care is a flashback to the last days of abortion, which Missouri completely banned last June. Dr. Colleen McNicholas, the chief medical officer at Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri, said the organization has established care with dozens of new patients, with pop-up clinics in St. Louis, Springfield, and across the Illinois border in Fairview Heights.
Many of the Planned Parenthood appointments were booked within the first few hours, and Stevie Miller, an uninsured nonbinary trans person living in rural Howell County, was able to snag a slot.
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