Opinion: Abiding by Connecticut’s promise to sustain its residents

Hartford Courant – Monday, August 31, 2026
By Dr. SJ Job, psychologist at Yale University’s School of Medicine

Imagine uprooting your family and transplanting your entire life to Connecticut so your child can finally feel safe, so your child can finally access the care they need to thrive.

Then, one month later, you’re told that the care you came for is no longer available to you. This is one family’s experience of their last year in Connecticut after major hospitals abruptly ended gender-affirming medical care for trans youth.

Over the past year, I’ve spoken with affected families and trans youth. Among families who have moved here for care, some are now quietly planning where they might have to flee next. As one parent noted, “We moved here for a better life. Now I’m asking myself, when do we run again, and where do we go?” All families described how a state they once saw as a haven suddenly felt unstable and unsafe, and how this sudden loss of care reshaped their sense of safety, health, and future.

Families described severe continuity-of-care failures: no transition planning, unmonitored medical interventions. Their trust in medical institutions has been deeply shaken, and many now fear being reported or even criminalised for seeking care. The mental health impact has been profound. Youth and parents linked their loss of care to spikes in anxiety, depression, self-harm, and suicidal thoughts, with stress radiating through entire families.

At the same time, youth and parents are clear that when gender-affirming care was available, it was life-changing and often life-saving, with high benefit and low regret. They stressed that access to hormones and related care dramatically improved youths’ mental health, self‑image, and futures, often making “life or death” differences.

So, when Attorney General William Tong took the fight for gender-affirming care to federal battlefields, I was proud that someone stood up for these families. When Gov. Ned Lamont said, “In Connecticut, we do not turn our backs on kids in need”, I believed him.

And when Lt. Gov. Bysiewicz echoed Lamont’s sentiments this year, reaffirming Connecticut’s commitment to the safety, support, and celebration of LGBTQ+ Connecticuters, I believed her.

Yet even as I applaud these sentiments and expressions of support from Connecticut’s leadership, I know from my work that they are still not enough. Trans youth in Connecticut need more from their leadership, and they need it now. Tong’s valiant charge promises to yield returns in the longer term, but CT leadership must do more now to restore Connecticut’s reputation and status as a haven for all families. Families affected by the disruption in care are calling for courageous political and institutional leadership to restore services, protect transgender youth’s healthcare, and treat gender‑affirming care as standard, essential medicine rather than a political bargaining chip.

For these families, gender-affirming care is not an abstract policy debate; it is the difference between watching their child thrive or lying awake at 4 a.m. just to make sure their teenager is still breathing. The experiences of these families in the wake of care disruption make the Connecticut’s imperative clear: we must move beyond politicisation and ensure that transgender youth are afforded the same protection, dignity, and access to necessary healthcare as any other Connecticut resident.

With its state motto, “qui transtulit sustinet”, Connecticut has long prided itself on being a place that supports its newcomers. It is time for our leaders and institutions to live up to that promise and stand, unwavering, with trans youth and their families.

As one trans youth told me:

“If places like Connecticut can provide an example of how we’re standing up for trans youth, you can become a standard of care that takes courage. It takes a backbone. Other people can follow that. But when these large institutions start crumbling, that allows other places, and it gives voice to what they’re doing. It’s like ‘okay, even [Connecticut’s] clinic has closed, see’. It’s a horrible pattern that is set up. So I wish for equality across the states in our country, and at the same time, I wish that places that do have the backing and the financial resources could stand up better to this administration and show a path forward that others could hopefully follow.”

The path forward is clear: Restore access to critical gender-affirming care for youth to ensure they receive accessible, life-saving, evidence-based care and equal protection under Connecticut’s laws. Rhetoric must not outpace action. Trans youth and their families are counting on Connecticut’s leadership to live up to the state’s motto and its promise to support all those who come to call it home

Dr. SJ Job is a psychologist at Yale University’s School of Medicine, and the opinions expressed herein are their own.

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