Idaho legislators want to take away the freedom of my transgender daughter and our family

Idaho is a great place to live for many reasons, including the shared fundamental belief that private family decisions should be left to families to make for themselves. But some Idaho politicians are attempting to insert themselves into my family’s personal medical decisions. It’s not right, and it’s not the Idaho I know.

After all, as a mom, nothing is more important to me than protecting my three children. My kids — my two sons, at 5 and 10, and my daughter, at 14 — are like any children and are slowly figuring out who they’re going to be as adults.

We play soccer and flag football, take our dogs to run in the hills and disagree about when to do homework or how many chores are fair.

I’m from Idaho, have lived here all my life, and my children are lucky to call Idaho home. They love it here and are surrounded by friends and family, including dozens of cousins who have also chosen to build their lives in Idaho.

My oldest child, my daughter, is smart, with a dry wit, and loves playing with her little brothers. She worries about the elderly, and it hurts her heart to see people not getting the care and attention they need. She’s thriving at school, surrounded by her friends and supported by her teachers and principal.

My daughter — my beautiful, funny, quirky daughter — is also transgender, meaning we thought she was a boy when she was born, but she has always been a girl in her heart and her soul. Learning about transgender identity has been a journey for our family, and it is a journey that has made our family stronger.

Some Idaho politicians, however, want to take away our ability to make internal family decisions about what is best for our child.

There is a lot of misinformation about what it means to be transgender, particularly when it comes to children. Some transgender children go on hormone blockers, the same safe and effective medicine that has been used for decades to treat children with hormone imbalances. Hormone blockers for transgender children are well-studied, taken under a doctor’s care and fully reversible should they stop taking them. Other treatments for transgender youth as they grow older are carefully laid out in well-established and researched medical standards of care.

No one “caused” my child to be trans. She knew she was a girl inside when she was 2 and would take my tank tops to wear them as dresses. As she continued to grow, she told us with her words who she is, and isn’t that what we want for our children?

I am so fortunate to have a daughter who is strong enough and brave enough to say, “I know who I am.” And I am shocked to hear politicians telling her that they know who she is and what’s right for her, better than she and her family know.

I want a world of choices for all my children. I want them to learn and grow and be held accountable for their actions, to gain experience when they make mistakes and to care about their neighbors. I want my children to be happy and to be proud of what they see when they look in a mirror. I’m working with my daughter’s doctors, medical experts, to give her the tools and the resources to do just that.

I can’t understand why some politicians want to take that support away from my family. As parents, we make the best choices for and with our children, using the best information available. That’s exactly what I’m doing by supporting my transgender daughter.

“Local control” and “parent choice” shouldn’t be just buzzwords to serve politicians when it’s convenient. If you want to live in a state that controls you, that removes your choice, that tells you how to raise your children, a state that inserts itself into your family’s private medical decisions, then maybe you should support HB 675, a bill that criminalizes medical experts for providing care to my transgender child. This bill puts politics over the health and well-being of my family and turns my beautiful and thriving daughter into a political prop.

If, on the other hand, you think that Idaho should hold true to its values, get out of the way of parents, and leave family decisions to families, please tell your lawmakers not to pass this bill. I thank you, my family thanks you, and my daughter thanks you.

This story was originally published March 6, 2022 at 4:00 AM.