The Campaign To Defend Trans Healthcare in Missouri Is Slow Going, on Purpose

CREVE COEUR, Mo. — Reneé Luckfield tries not to knock like a cop. In fact, the 29-year-old spends a lot of time thinking about how to make strangers comfortable when she shows up at their door to talk about transgender healthcare. A syncopated “tap — tap-tap-tap” sounds friendly even when she knocks loudly. In each encounter, she masks her own unease. “Honestly, it’s not something that I’m entirely comfortable with,” Luckfield, a transgender woman, said while walking door to door in this affluent St. Louis suburb. “And it’s not fair that we have to do this work.” Transgender issues have become a major theme in this year’s midterm elections, especially in Missouri, where voters are weighing a proposed constitutional amendment to bar minors from gender-transition surgery, cross-sex hormone therapy, and puberty blockers. The potential ban is part of a proposed amendment to reinstate a near-total ban on abortion in the state. Voters in four other states will also decide on transgender issues this year: a proposed ban on transgender health care for minors in Colorado, and proposed restrictions on transgender athletes in youth sports in Arizona, Colorado, Nebraska, and Washington. Luckfi...