When then-high schooler Page Clements came out as transgender in 2021, she knew it would change the course of her life. But she didn’t think it would force her to leave her home.
Her parents and most of her peers were accepting. As she began the yearslong process of social and medical transitioning, however, Clements said it got harder and harder to be herself in Kansas.
An English teacher at her school, Shawnee Mission North, sued the district and publicly railed against what she called “gender ideology.” And each year, lawmakers in Kansas and Missouri introduced bills affecting transgender people.
Right after Clements changed the gender marker on her driver’s license, Republican Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach sued to block the practice based on a state law. For two years, transgender Kansans were unable to change their gender marker, until a court struck the ban down earlier this year.
“I feel like I deal with stress pretty well,” Clements said. “But I've dealt with a couple of panic attacks when some of the more major news has gone through.”
Clements and her parents decided she needed to leave. She had enough credits to earn her high school diploma with a few summer school classes. At the same time, she applied for college and scholarships, and landed in Minnesota.
“Missing an entire year of being able to interact with all the friends that you knew,” Clements said, “can be pretty tough to deal with.”
Clements’ mom, Jill, said sending her daughter to college early was the right choice for her mental and physical wellbeing. But that didn’t make the abrupt separation any easier.
“It's a milestone of growing up, going through high school. And it was all gone,” she said. “I just feel like that was taken away from her.”
A national trend
In February of 2025, the Republican-dominated Kansas Legislature overcame a veto from Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly and passed a ban on gender-affirming care for minors, sending other families along the same path.
The law bans puberty blockers, hormone therapies and rarely-used surgeries.
“We have scores of children basically on the conveyor belt toward permanent injury,” Republican state Senate President Ty Masterson said at the time. “What I expect is for that conveyor belt to stop.”
In a floor debate, Republican Rep. Angela Stiens called gender dysphoria among kids and teens a “social contagion.”
“We know children and adolescents lack the emotional and cognitive maturity to consent to treatment that may have lifelong consequences,” she said.
Many health organizations, including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, support access to gender-affirming care for people under 18.
Nevertheless, Kansas joined 26 other states with laws restricting that access.
The families of two transgender teens in Kansas have sued in state court to block the law from taking full effect in January. But absent a favorable ruling for them in the next few weeks, families like theirs will not be able to access any medical treatments for gender dysphoria in their home state.
Families that have already navigated the expense and stigma of seeking care for their transgender child are forced to make another kind of life-changing decision — to end that care, to travel out of state or to leave.
In a survey of over 18,000 queer-identifying teens and young adults published in 2025, 39% of respondents said they had considered moving because of state laws affecting LGBTQ+ people. And despite the challenges of finding new work, housing and community, 4% actually did leave.
Another study roughly corroborated those figures in a larger dataset of legal adults.
“Actually being able to leave a state is a very difficult thing to do,” said Dr. Stephen Hobaica, a clinical psychologist who led the research with the Trevor Project and the Movement Advancement Project.
Hobaica, who is now based in Hawaii, said he grew up openly queer in a conservative state. He said if young people oppose a policy, lawmakers can’t expect them to be able to vote with their feet.
“They're thinking, ‘Well, if you don't like the state, go somewhere else,’ he said. “Well, a lot of these people can't.”
Life-altering decisions
Even with accepting parents and the resources to leave, Clements said Kansas laws disrupted her life and forced her to leave home early. But some families have navigated the fallout of the law without those advantages.
In July, R.A. moved from Kansas, the state she has called home her entire life, to Colorado, so her 11-year-old son can access gender-affirming care.
The Kansas News Service is identifying her only by her initials to protect her child’s privacy.
R.A.’s son was assigned female at birth. But as early as three years old, he rejected anything he perceived as feminine — from the way he wanted to dress, to the toys he wanted to play with, and even the length of his hair.
“He started school with all of his classmates as a boy. No one's ever known him as anything but a boy,” R.A. said.
Her son has met with a psychiatrist and received a diagnosis of gender dysphoria. Other than that, R.A. says, her son has been able to live a normal childhood: splashing through puddles with his sister and learning to play songs by Tyler, the Creator on the Tuba.
“He's a good kid,” R.A. said, “considering what he could be going through.”
When Kansas’ ban on gender-affirming care passed, R.A. started to panic. She considered staying in place and travelling to other states so her son could access care, but soon realized she couldn’t afford frequent trips and out-of-state insurance.
With support from her ex-husband, a close friend and a GoFundMe page, R.A. made the move. She left her job of 12 years, and her hometown of two decades, and told her son it was all for work.
“I didn't want him to blame himself for us having to give everything up,” she said.
The move has also separated the kids from their dad, Robert. Between rising costs for his small business, child support payments and now travel expenses to visit his kids, Robert has decided to put his house up for sale.
He also has mixed feelings about his son’s gender transition. Robert said he worries that puberty blockers and hormone treatments, which his son has not yet started, could have negative long-term effects.
“If that's what he wants, I want him to have it,” he said. “I'm just not sure that it's the right thing to do to allow a young child to make a decision like that that could be life-altering in the future.”
R.A. said she pored over medical studies and Facebook groups of parents with transgender children, and followed advice from mental health professionals and endocrinologists, before deciding on how to respond to her son’s gender identity.
Robert said he feels like the answers aren’t cut and dry.
“You can try to look up information on anything on the internet. And if you look hard enough, you can find information that backs your stance or your point of view,” he said.
“I just don't know who's right and who's wrong.”
Still, Robert opposes the ban on care that Kansas lawmakers passed this year.
“I don't know if that's something that laws should be made about,” he said. “I feel like that should be a unique decision-making process for every single individual.”
Zane Irwin reports on politics, campaigns and elections for the Kansas News Service. You can email him at zaneirwin@kcur.org.
The Kansas News Service is a collaboration of KCUR, Kansas Public Radio, KMUW and High Plains Public Radio focused on health, the social determinants of health and their connection to public policy.
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