Veronica, 17, drove with her mother nearly four hours from her home in Iowa to visit a doctor in Minneapolis in September. Iowa banned gender-affirming care for youth in March 2023.
Selena Simmons-Duffin/NPR
DES MOINES, Iowa – In the future, Veronica sees herself in a big city.
“I like chaos and spontaneousness,” she says, and she doesn’t get much of that in her town surrounded by farmland outside of Des Moines. It’s slow and boring, she says. Matching rows of ranch houses line wide manicured streets, with SUVs parked in the driveways.
Veronica is 17. She has two more years of high school, then she can graduate and leave.
Hers is not just the usual adolescent wanderlust. This Iowa town has turned out to be a punishing place to be a transgender teenager. Her mom, Emily, has fought to change her name in the high school’s system. There’s no good option for which bathroom to use at school. Emily says neighbors and classmates have made cruel comments.