Living in fear of CPS, some families with trans kids are leaving the state

Earlier this week, the Texas mother of a 17-year-old transgender boy panicked when she heard a knock at her door.

She made sure her children were upstairs, then answered cautiously, fearful the woman outside may be an investigator with the state’s child welfare agency. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott ordered the agency last month to investigate parents who help their children transition as potential child abusers.

“It was just like this elderly neighbor who wanted to ask what kind of tree we had in the front yard,” said the Houston-area mother, who asked not to be named out of fear of being targeted. “But my immediate reaction was fight-or-flight mode. Because that’s what we’re living in right now.”

It’s moments like these that have convinced her it’s time to move her family out of Texas.

“We are at this point moving as soon as we can get our house sold,” she said.

Families with transgender children across the state are weighing similar steps after months of increasing political attacks.

Some feel they have been left with an impossible choice: support their children’s gender identity and risk losing them to the state, or deny them treatments that the country’s largest physicians groups agree is medically necessary and in many cases lifesaving.

Katie Laird, a Houston-area woman who has a 15-year-old transgender son, has been consumed as her “trans mom” support group text thread blew up in recent weeks — first over Attorney General Ken Paxton’s assertion that gender-affirming care can be abuse, then over Abbott’s directive to Child Protective Services.

Yi-Chin Lee / Staff photographer A 17-year-old transgender boy organizes the family library on March 15, preparing for the Texas family’s move out of state amid fears of Child Protective Services.