Teen Vogue readers told Trump's executive order banning gender transitions for minors is a 'death sentence'
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An article in Teen Vogue is warning transgender youth that they are at risk of death due to President Donald Trump’s policies against child gender transition.
"I don't want to mince words here: stripping trans youth of their gender affirming care is a death sentence," Angelica Christina Torres, board director of the official nonprofit of The Stonewall Inn, the Stonewall Inn Gives Back Initiative, said in an interview published Wednesday in Teen Vogue.
In her biography for the Stonewall Initiative, Torres is described as an activist and "proud alumni of the nation's first fully accredited LGBTQIA+ high school, The Harvey Milk High School."
Torres also knocked Trump’s executive order banning "chemical and surgical" sex-change surgeries for minors.
"These Executive Orders create an even larger target on their backs for cisgender students to continue attacking and harming transgender youth, further pushing them towards self harm, depression, anxiety, PTSD, and in some cases, suicide," Torres said. "Gender affirming care is often the only shred of hope and joy that our vulnerable youth can hold onto."
"Gender-affirming care is lifesaving, and I can personally speak to that experience," she told Teen Vogue.
Torres said that transgender youth are subject to "relentless bullying in schools and [trans youth] are at high risk of suicide as a result of the attacks on their identity."
She highlighted a study from the LGBTQ activist group the Trevor Project from 2024 that claimed suicide attempts by "trans and non-binary youth had increased [up to] 72% over the past year as a result of anti-trans legislation."
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A study published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine, however, found that the rates of depression, anxiety, substance-use disorders and tendency to suicide were "significantly higher" among those who had a sex change surgery, assessed two years later.
Men who had sex change surgery had depression rates of 25% as opposed to males who did not have surgery (11.5%), and anxiety rates among that group were 12.8% compared to 2.6%. Women who had sex change surgery had 22.9% depression rates compared to 14.6% in the non-surgical group.
Meanwhile, Torres said trans youth "are afraid for their very lives." She described one "heartbreaking" interview of someone "afraid of being murdered in public because she's trans."
"That should send shivers down the spines of everyone," she said.
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Torres advised transgender youth to turn to the LGBTQ community.
"My biggest advice to the trans youth out there is seek out your community, because we're out here," Torres said. "You have a community of people who love you, who are rallying around you, who support you."