In many ways, Bri Johnson is a normal 15-year-old.
She plays video games — Helldivers 2 and Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun specifically. She cycles through quirky hyper-fixations. Right now, she’s obsessed with pickles, heavy machinery and bugs she finds in her neighborhood. And lately, she’s been experimenting with makeup.
“I use mascara as eyeliner to get a kind of splotchy look. It covers up imperfections and makes them look like they're on purpose,” she said.
Bri is also transgender. After years of mental health struggles that seemed to defy explanation, she realized in April of 2024 that she did not want to live life as a man. Bri eventually started taking medications to pause her male puberty and start to develop as a young woman instead.
Bri said those treatments saved her life.
“I look in the mirror. I like what I see,” she said. “I feel happier existing as myself.”
But Bri will soon lose access to that treatment in Kansas. In February, Republican state lawmakers overrode Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto to pass a ban on gender-affirming health care for minors. It will take full effect at the end of the year.
Twenty-seven states have enacted similar restrictions, affecting thousands of families like Bri’s.
People who support banning this type of care, like Republican Kansas Senate President Ty Masterson, say they want to protect kids from making life-altering medical decisions they may later regret.
“There's all types of precedent for restricting minors from dangerous things,” he said. “We don't even let you get tattoos or in tanning beds when you're a minor, right?”
But Bri said many people don’t understand that it is not an option to simply stop being trans, or to no longer need treatment.
“I didn’t want to be trans”
It took a stint in “grippy sock jail” — Bri’s moniker for a mental health hospital — to come to terms with her gender identity.
Bri’s emotional wellbeing had been spiraling for a long time. Her mom, Janna Malcom, remembers watching her daughter struggle to complete basic online coursework or keep any semblance of a clean room.
In April of 2024, Bri became suicidal.
“I don't trust myself to keep myself alive at this point,” she remembers thinking.
After two weeks in a hospital bed with little to do but think, Bri finally put words to what she had long suspected — that her gender didn’t match the sex doctors had assigned to her at birth.
“I didn't really want to be trans. I was running through my head every other option that this could mean,” she said.
Before the mental health hospital, Bri searched for voices to dissuade her. She listened to conservative talk shows online that discussed “autogynephilia,” suggesting that trans women are just straight men who gain sexual gratification from having female characteristics.
But that didn’t resonate with her. As young as 5, she remembers running around the house in a red polka-dot dress she borrowed from her sister. After she left that hospital bed and came out as trans to her mom, things started to click into place.
“All I was thinking was, ‘I can finally just relax and just be a person,’” she said. “I didn't care as much at all what people thought of me because I actually knew who I was.”
What does it take for a minor to access gender-affirming health care?
Even before Kansas enacted a law that will penalize medical providers who treat gender dysphoria in minors, Janna said the process of finding care for her daughter was riddled with red tape.
“It was very frustrating,” Janna said through a smile.
She deals with complex documents every day at her job with a tax software company. Nevertheless, navigating the health care system with her daughter was challenging.
First, they saw a counselor, who referred them to a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist recommended they see an endocrinologist, who said they needed a referral from a primary care doctor. When they came back with a referral, that office said they didn’t provide that kind of care for minors.
Janna said she called seven or eight providers before she found M-Care, a clinic in Wichita that specializes in gender-affirming care for kids and adults.
That’s where Bri and Janna met Amanda Mogoi, a nurse practitioner who has been working with transgender patients since 2019. She has treated hundreds of people and seen first-hand the effect they have on patients’ wellbeing.
“Those hormones and puberty blockers in particular are life changing for folks,” she said.
After blood work and some serious conversations, Bri decided to take puberty blockers to stop her body from producing testosterone. A few months later, she started on estrogen and progesterone.
Those treatments come with some well-understood risks, like possible infertility. Janna wanted to make sure Bri had all the information she needed to make the right decision.
“As a parent it's hard to (walk) that line between ‘what do I do for you, and what do I encourage you to do yourself?’” she said.
Testosterone blockers did have side effects for Bri, like brain fog. And she hopes to adopt if she ever wants kids and can’t have them herself. Nevertheless, Bri said those treatments could not have come soon enough.
“It is literal life-saving medication. And people don't understand that,” she said. “They think it's cosmetic. It isn't. I would have died without it.”
A politicized identity
Under Kansas’ new law, Bri has until January to wind down her gender-affirming treatments. But the family’s in-network pharmacy has already stopped filling her prescriptions, so her medication now costs ten times what it used to.
The family is anticipating long drives to Colorado, where gender-affirming care remains legal for people under 18. But Bri wants to stay engaged in Kansas while she’s still here.
Following their routine, Bri and her parents drove into Wichita on a Saturday in June to attend a protest at the intersection of Broadway and Douglas Avenues. Bells rang, cars honked, and protesters yelled “No Trump! No KKK! No Fascist USA!” through bullhorns.
Bri feels affirmed here; she’s not the only one waving a trans flag.
But skeptics are never far. Enjoying a charcuterie board at a nearby restaurant patio was Hunter Larkin, a local real estate developer who was previously the mayor of Goddard, a small city just outside of Wichita.
Larkin said he didn’t recognize the blue, pink and white trans pride flag Bri was wearing. But he believes there are only two genders and he supports Kansas’ ban on gender-affirming care for minors.
“If you're trying to have young people, who are not adults, and they're not matured in the brain, and they're trying to change their bodily structure. I think that's very inappropriate,” he said.
Larkin said protesters have the right to speak their minds, though he resented the idea that he should be demonized for holding opposing beliefs.
“These people don't bother me,” he said. “I love him (sic), I love you. You guys need to love me too, though.”
Bri said she had heard it all before.
“How do you agree to disagree about human rights?” she said.
Zane Irwin reports on politics, campaigns and elections for the Kansas News Service. You can email him at zaneirwin@kcur.org.
The Kansas News Service is a collaboration of KCUR, Kansas Public Radio, KMUW and High Plains Public Radio focused on health, the social determinants of health and their connection to public policy.
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