Deep Reads: After Mississippi banned his hormone shots, an 8-hour journey
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 29 July 2023
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This year, Mississippi banned transgender young people, such as Ray, from accessing hormones or other gender-transition treatments. Nearly half the country has since passed similar bills, according to the Movement Advancement Project.
Across the country, families are doing everything they can to protect their trans children. Some uprooted their lives in red states for the promise of protections in blue ones. Others filed lawsuits. Katie, Ray’s mother, couldn’t afford to move, and she needed a solution faster than the courts could offer, so she’d settled on a cheaper, quicker plan: She’d take a day off from her nursing job, and she and Ray would travel out of state for his medical care.
This story is the third in a collection of new, occasional bonus episodes you’ll be hearing from “Post Reports.” We’re calling these stories “Deep Reads” and they’re part of The Post’s commitment to immersive and narrative journalism.
Today’s story was written by Casey Parks of The Washington Post and read by Adrienne Walker for Noa: News Over Audio, an app offering curated audio articles.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, I'm Casey Parks, and I'm a reporter for The Washington Post. |
| 0:06.0 | I write about gender and family. |
| 0:08.0 | You're about to hear the next story in our deep-read series here on Post Reports. |
| 0:13.4 | It's read by a narrator from our partners at the app NOAA, News Over Audio. |
| 0:18.4 | I wrote this story about a road trip one family took after Mississippi ban transgender |
| 0:22.6 | care for minors. |
| 0:24.8 | When I joined the post two years ago, only one state in the country, Arkansas, banned |
| 0:29.3 | young people from transitioning genders. |
| 0:31.8 | And then all of a sudden this year, another 18 states banned that care. |
| 0:37.1 | The reason I picked Mississippi is it has a really rare enforcement mechanism as part of |
| 0:41.4 | its law, caught an aid in a bet clause. |
| 0:43.8 | So basically it says, young people, not only can you not transition in Mississippi, you |
| 0:48.6 | cannot go elsewhere to get this care. |
| 0:50.8 | I picked Mississippi because I knew if you're going to leave, you're essentially breaking |
| 0:55.4 | the law and you're risking a lot to help your kid. |
| 0:59.0 | So here's the story. |
| 1:02.2 | Like any family, Katie and her son Ray had their road trip staples. |
| 1:06.6 | They always packed sour peach candy. |
| 1:09.7 | They talked more than they listened to music and they played a game they called nature. |
| 1:15.2 | Anyone who spotted an animal racked up points, though the exact number depended on the species |
| 1:20.3 | and an in-the-moment car vote. |
| 1:23.2 | Katie wanted to win. |
... |
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