A continued summary of stories and testimonies by 58 transgender adults on how critically life-saving access to gender-affirming care is, as documented in an amicus brief in response to an Arkansas law that would ban this healthcare for trans youth in the state:

Activist Major Griffin-Gracy, who is now over 70, began recieving gender-affirming care at the age of 16, said “Despite the fact that I’m a proud transgender woman, I have run into walls at every turn in life. People telling me that I couldn’t, that I shouldn’t, that I can’t.” Hormone treatment made challenges in her life easier than they would have otherwise been, Miss Major said.

Founder of Trans Equity Consulting Cecilia Gentili, 49, self-managed and received gender-affirming care at 17 and said that it was “great” and “changed her life,” but that it could have helped her even more if she was able to access it from a doctor rather than needing to obtain it on her own.

Jazz Jennings, a 21-year-old student from Florida, valued her family’s love and support in obtaining gender-affirming care when she began puberty: “I never looked masculine. I developed alongside my peers as a female teenager. I was able to lead a happy childhood because I was able to live as the girl I knew I was.”

Elise Bader-Saye, a 22-year-old student from Texas, received gender-affirming care at 16, which helped alleviate severe distress that was ‘blocking out everything else’ in life: “Having the chance to stop those changes early was critical in allowing me to actually experience the rest of my life as a child and come into my adult life intact and on the right track towards a better future.”

Jack Einstein, a 23-year-old paralegal in New York, started receiving gender-affirming care at 13, with testosterone at 15 and top surgery at 17, and hasn’t experienced depression or dysphoria since then: “As someone who has benefited from gender-affirming care during adolescence, I can confirm that it saved my life and I have never once regretted the decision.”