Hundreds gather outside Lurie Children's Hospital to protest youth gender care change: 'I want my healthcare'

Noella McMaher, an eighth grader, was excited about having most of this week off between parent-teacher conferences and snow days. It meant more time for games like Roblox and Minecraft, her favorites.

But she spent her Saturday helping to lead a protest of hundreds gathered across the street from Lurie Children’s Hospital on Saturday, protesting its recent decision to end gender-affirming surgeries for patients 19 and younger.

“What they’re doing isn’t right,” Noella told the Sun-Times. “Children are being harmed by this, they aren’t getting what they need. Even people who aren’t children anymore.”

“But I don’t know if I could actually change their minds,” she added, noting confusion around whether or not she’d be able to get her puberty blocker implant removed now that it no longer had any medication in it.

An executive order, signed by President Donald Trump on Jan. 28, authorized federal agencies to end research and education grants for institutions that provide gender-affirming care for patients 19-years or younger. The order removed such care from state-funded coverage and called on the Department of Justice to pursue litigation to oppose it.

The order was blocked by a federal judge, though the hospital said the ruling wouldn’t change its decision.

“We continue our pause … as we continue to assess the rapidly evolving environment,” a Lurie Children’s spokesperson wrote in a statement Thursday night. “At this time, we are continuing to provide other care and treatment plans for the [gender] program’s patients.”

During the demonstration, several speakers addressed the crowd, including one woman whose son had his care denied after the policy change at Lurie Children’s. Other parents didn’t speak out of fear for their safety, but instead they had an organizer read statements to the crowd.

The one mother who did speak to the crowd read out messages her son had received from peers in recent months, some containing slurs: “Trump says you don’t exist” and “Why don’t you take two handfuls of pills in case the first one doesn't work?”

Many at the protest said Northwestern Medicine had also ended gender-affirming surgeries for patients under 19. Northwestern didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. A former Lurie Children’s gender-care patient told the Sun-Times that his appointment at Northwestern, which he had scheduled after the Lurie Children’s policy change, had been canceled Friday afternoon.

In a recent lawsuit, University of Illinois Health was accused of canceling an Illinois teen’s chest surgery in the wake of the order. Treatments for transgender youth have stopped elsewhere in the country, including in California and Colorado.

Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul and 14 other attorneys general recently vowed support for gender-affirming care. Illinois law prohibits discrimination based on gender identity by healthcare providers and requires state-regulated insurance plans to cover hormone therapy and shields Illinois providers and patients from legal actions from other states.

Tommy King, a 16-year-old trans boy from Naperville who attended the protest, said he was denied approval for gender-affirming care by Lurie Children’s Hospital, and later Planned Parenthood, because his estranged father wouldn’t approve of the care his doctors had determined he needed.

He said he sees echoes of that — capitulating on a few patients to try to protect others as laws narrow in on gender-affirming care altogether — in the policies hospitals are enacting in the wake of the executive order.

“I was told they couldn’t go all in for one person if it meant they couldn’t protect others,” Tommy said. “I had to sacrifice my opportunity to be affirmed and feel comfortable in my body and not hate myself everyday.”

Tommy — along with his mother, Emma King, — said he saw it similarly to abortion rights: “My body, my choice.”

“This shouldn’t be politicized, it should be between me, my kid and his pediatrician,” Emma King said. “To see my child continually questioning whether he should exist is something no parent should have to go through. … The attempt to make my kid, and other kids disappear is distressing beyond words.”

Despite the White House's anti-trans policies, Tommy encouraged others to stay hopeful and called on other trans kids to stand up for themselves. He said he started organizing at his high school in response to the orders.

“I want my healthcare, and I want to be recognized as a human being,” Tommy said. But "we got through it before, so we can get through it again. Even if it doesn’t get better for a bit, I know that it will.”