My name is Annika Gibson, and I am a transgender teenager from Louisville, Kentucky. On February 21, 2023, I was finally awarded a prescription for feminizing hormone therapy after years of waiting in desperate anticipation. Unfortunately, on the same day, Kentucky House Bill 470 was proposed, seeking to ban all gender-affirming healthcare for minors in the state of Kentucky. 

If this bill is passed, transgender children and young adults across the state will be denied access to life-saving medical care. In addition to delaying the transitions of minors who haven't yet been afforded the opportunity to begin hormone therapy, it will force those of us who already have access to said care to detransition. When denied the care that they need, transgender people invariably experience drastic increases in depression and suicidal ideation, for which the only effective treatment in transgender people is access to hormone therapy. 

I remember what it was like for me growing up as a boy. I knew from a very early age that I was different. Despite my traditionally "masculine" interests, I knew that I desperately wanted to be a girl. I would pray practically every night, hoping that God would take pity on me and change me into the girl I knew myself to be deep down inside. It never worked. As I grew older and my natural puberty began, my quality of life plummeted. Nearly every second of every one of my days was spent stressing over the fact that my body was being dragged away from the one I had wished for my entire life. As male puberty continued, my body only became more distant from the one which my brain was "programmed" for. I developed severe depression, and even attempted to end my own life multiple times. If this bill is passed, these same stresses will afflict every single transgender child and teenager in the entire state, and nobody deserves that. Many of us would even be driven to suicide if denied the care we need. Even one life lost is far too many. 

Please sign and share this petition. It would mean the world to myself and the rest of my community.  Thank you, and have a wonderful day.