Lizette Trujillo worries about her son — and what might happen to him if an upcoming U.S. Supreme Court decision goes a certain way.
It stems from the state of Tennessee and a law that bans gender-affirming care for transgender youth. The Supreme Court is set to hear the case next month.
Trujillo is a Tucson small business owner and her son is transgender. She wrote about it recently in an opinion piece in the Arizona Mirror.
Full conversation
LIZETTE TRUJILLO: There has been millions of dollars spent on misinforming people around what access to care looks like. And when it came to us and our experience and the experience of many families that I have been in community with, since our journey began in 2015, is that these are really thoughtful conversations that are had between a pediatrician and a therapist and the families, regarding what gender affirming care will look like, what it could look like for their child. And it's not all the same, right? Like people will have varying needs when it comes to the health care that they need.
What is really, really important is that when women and or transgender people lose access to their bodily autonomy, we all lose. And we're seeing this when it comes to the reproductive rights fight that is happening. We've seen the loss of many women's lives. And so I firmly believe that it was really important to talk about this because those intersections meet.
And my child deserves to live a healthy, happy life and have access to care that is personal and private, and that has been decided and talked about for years between us and our care team.
LAUREN GILGER: Right, like take us into that process a little bit, you write about this a little bit in the mirror and it's really interesting. Talk about the process of getting gender affirming care for your son. Like, did you have concerns at the beginning about what this might look like? Long term effects, side effects, things like that.
TRUJILLO: I think all families, all parents have concerns around what that will look like. And you ask those questions of your provider, and they are very open and clear about what gender affirming care might look like for your family and your child. I think that it's really, really important that there is a lot of scientific data that supports gender affirming care.
For us personally, a lot of times gender affirming care, for us in the beginning of Daniel's social transition and the early parts of his life just meant that he walked into a doctor's office where his name was correctly used, and so were his pronouns, and he was respected. And so oftentimes it could have been for an earache or a broken wrist, which he did like in sixth grade, skateboarding. But, what gender affirming care often is just respecting the person that's sitting in front of you.
Also, many pediatricians will talk about what are the impacts of blockers, which have been used for decades for various things, for you when they're in precocious puberty or for other various needs that kids will have.
And so again, this debate shouldn't be a public one. We should have the right to make private medical decisions that are appropriate for our child and his health needs.
GILGER: You talk in this piece about some of the things that parents of trans kids like you are accused of, right? Like that you're often accused of being, you know, like permissive parents who sort of say yes to whatever their kids want, or that maybe you're ideological that, that you're indoctrinating your kids into believing they’re somebody else or there's something else. Have you found any truth in any of that in your experience?
TRUJILLO: Not at all. So when my child went to his third year pediatric visit, the doctor asked all these developmental questions and one of the developmental questions was, “are you a boy or a girl?” And I remember my child looked at us and smiled and said, “boy” and then hopped because hopping and walking backwards were part of these developmental requests, right?
And the doctor looked at my child and said, “no, no, no, you are a girl.” And the doctor looked at me and I was in shock about like what, what happens next? And then we just moved on, right? And from that moment, gender became very much not a conversation but showed up so much in our journey, right? People will ask me, “when did you know?” When it wasn't one moment.
It was a lot of moments over the course of many years where my child was asking to be seen, acknowledged and accepted. And my husband and I didn't do those things until he was 8 and a friend acknowledged him as him. And when I asked my child, “is this how you see yourself? Is this what's happening?”
My child said, “yes, I know that in my heart and in my mind, I am a boy.” I think when we're having this conversation around medical care, there's this idea that we don't have an understanding around a person's biological makeup. And that's not really at the core of what happens when we are supporting our children.
We are acknowledging the fact that they are having a different and incongruent gender experience and we're choosing to love and affirm and protect them in a world that says that they should not know who they are.
My son will say he very clearly understands who he is, and that he faces challenges because he is who he is and lives openly and freely in that way. And our family providing him the support and love and medical care that he deserves makes him navigating this very challenging moment easier.
GILGER: There are other laws that have been passed to do with transgender youth in Arizona. You've spoken about some of them and your son has as well in the past, and you wrote this line in your op-ed that I want to read. It says, “as a mom, it's a horrible feeling to have so many people so loudly hate kids like my son.” Talk a little bit about the kind of toll that the accumulation, the conversation it sounds like has on not just him, but your family.
GILGER: It's been a hard, long few years. In 2018, we saw around 20-plus anti-trans bills in the state of Arizona. And then, in 2024, there were more than 600 across the country. We saw 85 get past and obviously Skrmetti vs. Tennessee is one of those cases that's now going to be heard at the Supreme Court on Dec. 4, and our family will be at the ACLU rally out in front of SCOTUS that day.
It's been hard. But, the silver lining is that while this debate is hurtful, and often can lead to violence against transgender people, more and more people have an understanding around who trans people are and that trans people exist in our communities. That part I am grateful for, but it has taken its toll.
The silver lining, for me, was I was doing a panel with my son not too long ago. And he said, “my parents have loved and affirmed me so much that I can walk through this world with confidence and love for myself and for who I am.”
And I think that regardless of the years of stress and advocacy that we've had to put in to show up at the state Legislature every year to give a human face to this issue, it's been worth it, and I hope that other families of trans youth know that they aren't alone.
