Her state bans gender-affirming care for teenagers. So she travels 450 miles for it.

"We're not going to use the real name for reasons of safety" but then they publish a photo which is probably easily identifiable. Way to go, NPR!

Anyway, this kid is neurodivergent/neurodivergent (you can tell just by the facial expression) and why are they wearing a rosary around their neck? It's not jewellery. Probably wearing it for some kind of goth aesthetic, and for that alone I'd like to slap them even sillier than they already are.

Parents are divorced - what a surprise. Mom knew her baby was trans even before the kid came out as trans, that would be when the kid was about 10 years old (going by dates and age given in the story).

So kid is neurodivergent or other problem, mom is attention-seeking, this is a great way to Munchausen's By Proxy your vulnerable kid so you can have something exciting in dull, boring, farmland Iowa.

When Iowa's ban took effect, Veronica was taking puberty blockers. By that point, she had been out as trans to her friends for three years – out to her parents and siblings for two. She had also developed an eating disorder so severe she has gone to residential treatment twice.

Kid 'comes out' as trans to their friends aged 13. Again, what a surprise. Mommy seems to be really pushing the trans narrative:

Her mom Emily thinks these two challenges are related. "I wonder if — just knowing that you don't want to use the bathroom [at school], and so then the way to avoid using the bathroom would be not to drink and not to eat during the day."

Veronica shrugs. "I think they were just both happening simultaneously, separately," she says.

This kid is ruined, let's hope that after Mommy pushes them out of the nest, she won't move on to the next kid in line to give her something to talk to the papers about.