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.”
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.
