Protesters Rally For Trans Lives

A group of 150 protesters on the New Haven Green closed their eyes for a moment, prompted by Trans Haven organizer Kirill Staklo.

“Raise your hand if you are somebody or love somebody whose life was saved by gender-affirming care,” Staklo said. ​“Now, open your eyes.”

Nearly 150 hands had braved the sky, the atmosphere heavy with recognition.

The crowd had gathered Thursday afternoon to protest a decision two weeks ago by Yale New Haven Health to stop providing medication-based gender-affirming care to trans youth under the age of 19, along with Connecticut Children’s Hospital’s decision to end its gender-affirming care program altogether. 

The protest was cosponsored by a wide array of local advocacy groups, including Trans Haven, the CT Party for Socialism and Liberation, several unions and healthcare advocacy organizations, the New Haven Pride Center, Citywide Youth Coalition, Children of Marsha P. Johnson, and New Haven Immigrants Coalition. 

Prior to the protest, hospital spokesperson Mark D’Antonio wrote in a statement, echoing a letter that patients received on July 23: ​“We have been carefully monitoring federal executive orders and administrative actions relating to gender-affirming care for patients under age 19. After a thorough assessment of the current environment, we have made the very difficult decision to modify the pediatric gender program to eliminate the medication treatment component of the gender-affirming program for patients under age 19.”

“This decision was not made lightly,” D’Antonio continued. ​“We are aware of the profound impact that this decision will have on the patients treated in this program, as well as their families.” He noted that YNHH is ​“committed to offering transitional support” for the patients.

“We need an immediate reversal of this decision,” Staklo said at the rally, calling on city and state leaders to find a way to ensure that medical providers keep gender-affirming care available. 

The crowd spanned generations and included teachers and healthcare workers, parents and children, seasoned leftist activists and a handful of city officials. Their voices united in a series of chants over the course of nearly two hours. 

“When trans rights are under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back!” the protesters chanted. ​“1, 2, 3, 4, open up the clinic doors! 5, 6, 7, 8, make CT a safe state!”

“It’s gotten so bad that care providers are telling people to hold onto expired [gender-affirming] medication just in case you need it,” said Emmett, a representative of Teamsters 1150’s Pride Caucus.

YNHH administrators ​“have decided that trans people are disposable,” said Staklo’s fellow emcee, Sam.

Speaker after speaker emphasized the stakes of the decision to deny gender-affirming medical care for trans youth, who often report experiencing intensely distressing gender dysphoria. A 2023 study from the UCLA School of Law found that 81 percent of trans adults in the U.S. have at one point contemplated ending their lives, and 42 percent attempted to do so at some point over the course of their lifetimes. 

Many of Thursday’s speakers and attendees echoed a version of the same statement: ​“Gender-affirming care saved my life.”

Protester Angel Fernandez-Ayala, who is 24, attested to that experience after recently undergoing gender-affirming surgery. (YNHH had not been performing surgeries on minors; the medical care affected by the new policy included reversible puberty-blocking medication and, for some older teens, hormone replacement therapy.) 

“It’s every trans youth’s right to get gender-affirming care,” Fernandez-Ayala said.

“Trans people have been at the forefront of every single movement. We are not silent. We are not meek. We are not weak. We have always stood up for everyone in our community and for everybody else’s communities,” Staklo said. 

He joined other speakers in decrying President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement crackdowns, Congress’ decision to shrink Medicaid access, and rising economic inequality as the number of billionaires in the country continues to rise.

In the crowd stood Mayor Justin Elicker and Health Director Maritza Bond.

Elicker said that he spoke with leadership at Yale New Haven Hospital in the aftermath of the decision to stop providing gender-affirming medicine to youth. He said that Yale New Haven Health faced potential funding cuts under the Trump administration, which has made it a priority to threaten institutions providing medicine-based gender-affirming care.

“I can’t force” the institution to go back on this decision, he said. ​“The important thing is not to obey in advance.”

He underscored the city’s commitment to ​“welcoming everyone,” including ​“the LGBTQ community and the trans community.”

“It was very helpful to hear what a lot of people here had to say today,” he said, as the city considers how to support trans youth in the school system and the community at large.

At one point, someone walking by the Green began to yell and curse out the protest. But the crowd’s words of resistance were far louder. 

As New Haven Federation of Teachers representative Erin Michaud put it, ​“We are here today because we love our kids.”

The Trans Lifeline operates a peer support phone service run by trans people for trans and questioning peers. If you need someone trans to talk to, even if you’re not in crisis or if you’re not sure you’re trans, call 877 – 565‑8860 Monday through Friday, from 1 PM – 9 PM Eastern time. 

The Trevor Project offers 24/7 crisis support for LGBTQ+ young people via text, chat, or phone. To reach a trained listener, call 1 – 866 – 488‑7386 or text START to 678 – 678.

Below are excerpts from two speeches delivered on Thursday.

Layne Gianakos: "Someone Is Out There Needing What I Had"

Fifteen years ago, I was that trans kid: 17, already suicidal, already out of options. 

Yale didn’t have a gender program back then. No clinic. No guidelines. Just one endocrinologist more interested in the research than the risk of letting me die.

That’s why I’m alive.

I was 17 when they gave me hormones and still 17 when they saved my life. I had already tried to not be here. And still, I had hope.

I wanted time to just be. I wanted to walk into a dorm room and not be a warning sign. Not a punch line. Not a walking debate. 

I wanted to be a person. Not a policy. Not a petition. 

That was 15 years ago. Today that door is closed. They closed it quietly a few weeks ago. No press release, no explanation, no future for the next kid who needs what I had. 

And it matters. Seventy-eight percent of us have thought about ending our lives. Forty percent have tried. That’s not a statistic. That’s a stack of unsent college applications. That’s the bedroom your kid didn’t leave. That’s the Instagram story no one knew was goodbye until it was gone.

This isn’t about policy. It’s about [YNHH] choosing ease over policy and letting trans kids take the hit.

Yale knew what they were doing, because they already saved me once. They just decided not to do it again…

Someone is out there needing what I had. So if I’m here, they can be too. But only if someone holds the door open when the next kid comes knocking. 

Alyssa-Marie Cajigas Rivera Ortiz: "We Will Not Sit By While They Drag Our Children Into The Shadows."

What [YNHH] has done isn’t about standards of care. It is about appeasing the growing far-right movement that is sweeping this country. A movement that tells our babies they don’t deserve to live, to thrive, to be seen, to be loved. We will not sit by while they drag our children into the shadows.

We are here because silence is not an option for us. We are here because every time a trans youth is denied their bodily autonomy, denied therapy, denied gender-affirming care, a door to their survival is slammed shut.

Every delay is an abscess wound. Every callous act by these so-called healthcare institutions becomes a nail in the coffin of our futures. Trans youth do not need your pity. They need healthcare, they need housing, they need safety. And they need us, right here, refusing to back down.

[YNHH] wants to protect its reputation, its donors, its proximity to political power. We are here to protect our people.

We are here to defend the living legacy of Black trans women like Marsha P. Johnson: women who threw bricks so we could have our rights, who danced in heels while organizing underground survival networks, who dared to be divine in a world that tried to kill them.

Let me remind you: Black trans feminism has always been and will always be the blueprint to our liberation. Because when Black trans women organize, we don’t just demand inclusion. We demand transformation.

We don’t just want a seat at the table, we want to burn that table down and build a new one where no one gets left behind.

We are not here begging for scraps. We are demanding a system that nourishes us all, from our neighborhoods to the hospitals to the halls of Congress.

Yale thinks it can quietly pull the plug on care and hide behind its lawyers, but we’re here to tell them we see you. We see your cruelty, we see your hypocrisy, and we see your hands covered in the blood of every trans youth that you’ve abandoned.

To the state of Connecticut, if you claim to be a safe harbor, then act like it. Legislate like it. Fund like it. Protect our youth like it. … We are watching a state once known for its progressiveness tilt toward the same MAGA extremism that is threatening lives across the country. If we don’t organize now… We will lose what little ground we have gained in the last decade.

To every trans youth out there, whether you are out or not, whether you have access to care or not, I need you to hear me. You are not alone. You are sacred.

And we will fight like hell for you. … Because trans power is people power. Trans rage is holy. And our liberation will never be negotiated.