Healthcare, rights, and the question of belonging…

If the first crack in our decision to leave came from safety concerns, the next came from the realization that we were asking our children to tolerate systems that didn’t see them, or worse, actively worked against them.

There were the day-to-day things. After my second child, I struggled with anxiety and worsening PCOS symptoms. The costs and delays of care were becoming staggering. I’d spend hours calling providers, only to be told something wasn’t covered, or that I’d need to wait. Women’s health was treated with a shrug, unless it was an emergency, it rarely felt urgent to anyone else.

After my third child, I dealt with prolapse. My midwives were excellent and quickly identified the issue. But treatment? That was another story. Our insurance didn’t cover pelvic floor therapy. Out-of-pocket costs added up fast, and I had to explain, again and again, why it mattered. Why this was affecting my daily life. My ability to mother. My ability to exist in my body.

After my last baby, I needed an IUD for reasons not related to birth control, as my partner had already chosen a vasectomy. But by that time, access to misoprostol was limited due to overlapping abortion restrictions started by judges in our state. I was placed on a wait list. They finally called back to let me know it was my turn, you know, after we’d already arrived in Canada.

And that wasn’t even the hardest part. One of our children was born with a cleft lip and palate. The medical costs were enormous and complicated. Coordinating care felt like a full-time job. But what broke me were the medical professionals not having social skills and deciding that in order to be in charge they needed to scare us into their line of thinking by turning me into Child Protective Services.

Let me be clear, it was my name on the paperwork, not my male partners. I was too loud, I was too “involved” in my child’s care. We dealt with CPS more than once. Not because of anything we’d done to our child, but because I insisted on being part of my child’s care team. Because I had questions. Because I noticed things. And because I expected to be believed when I communicated what I was seeing.

Even the CPS officers seemed frustrated, they actually told us it was a waste of time. But it still happened. And it didn’t feel accidental.

It was a constant message: trust us, but don’t ask questions. Be grateful, but not too involved. There was no room for nuance, no respect for complexity. Especially not for female identifying parents.

And then there were the laws.

We are raising LGBTQ+ kids. We have a transgender child. We’re not guessing. We’re not speculating. We’re listening.

And we were watching the legal landscape shift beneath our feet.

In 2017, the so-called “bathroom bill” failed in Texas, but Governor Abbott signed HB 3859. It allows child-placement agencies to impose their beliefs on and discriminate against children and families while providing taxpayer-funded services. That same year, cities like Austin and Dallas passed non-discrimination ordinances. But they felt like sandbags in a rising tide.

By 2021, a new law barred K–12 students from participating in sports unless it aligned with the gender on their birth certificate. Then it expanded to college athletes. And in 2023, Texas joined a wave of states banning gender-affirming care for minors. Where’s the line, can I use my child’s chosen name? Or is that too affirmative? I had no interest in dealing with CPS again.

Texas has no statewide law protecting LGBTQ+ individuals from discrimination. None. So it felt like we were on borrowed time. And while we found support in friends and family, how do you show up and be present for others, for your children, when you’re worried about which of your friends or family might lean just right enough to decide to call the state and turn you in?

When people ask why we left, I sometimes say “for safety.” But I also mean emotional safety. Medical autonomy. The ability to walk through the world without wondering if your rights will be debated in the next legislative session. Without feeling like your child’s existence is up for a vote.

I didn’t want my children to grow up believing they had to fight this hard just to be. I didn’t want them to normalize that exhaustion. To internalize that they were a problem to be managed or a threat to someone else’s belief system. I didn’t want to teach them that this was simply the cost of living somewhere.

And I know, not everyone can leave.

Leaving was a choice made possible by privilege. By paperwork. By timing. By having somewhere else to go, and extended family willing to help us settle in once we landed. By resources that allowed us to imagine a different future and then act on it. I don’t take that lightly.

For many families, staying isn’t a failure of courage or imagination, it’s reality. It’s obligation. It’s love. It’s survival. And the injustice is not that some people leave, but that so many are forced to endure systems that harm them because they have no viable alternative.

We didn’t leave because we stopped caring. We left because caring, fully, fiercely, meant we could not ask our children to absorb the cost of a system that refused to see them. If anything, leaving sharpened our responsibility to keep naming what is broken, and to stand in solidarity with those who are still there, still navigating, still pushing back in the ways they can.

This wasn’t a rejection of everyone who stayed. It was an act of protection, made possible by circumstance and privilege, and carried with deep respect for those whose choices are narrower, and whose stakes are often higher.