Thread by @NicPoindexter

My 14 year old trans kiddo has attempted suicide twice since the #OkLeg closed his gender affirming clinic in September. I hope the legislators are happy with the fact that they have removed children from receiving preventative care. We weren't even talking about surgery 🧵

or lifelong changes. We were talking about mental health, eating disorders, trauma, and how to have healthy relationships. By closing his clinic and increasing dangerous rhetoric, adult legislators have used my child as a pawn to keep power and have actively harmed him

and my entire family. My beautiful child who was raised in OK for nearly his entire life, we moved here when he was 4 months old. But this state has become so toxic we are leaving in a month. When we learned he was trans, we simply took him to the doctor for help.

Now those doctors can't even work in the clinic they built. Our gender affirming care appointment with another doctor is still weeks away with a bill to ban the care entirely is on @GovStitt and will likely be signed into law before we can receive care.

The bill is so vague that we don’t know what care will be banned and what won’t be. I encourage every single person who loves my kid or kids like him to call the Governor and ask for him to do the right thing and allow medical professionals to treat trans kids

according to best practices. Otherwise kids will die. They will die of preventable medical conditions but also suicide. I also call on each and every member of the OKLeg to stop harming trans folks to keep power. You are the ones harming children, not the medical doctors.