GEOFF BENNETT: Earlier this month, Texas joined 19 other states that banned transition-related care for minors.

Laura Barron-Lopez recently spent time in Texas to learn more about the law and spoke to one family grappling with what's next.

You should know this story includes discussions about suicide and depression.

LEAH, 12 Years Old: We're just like a real family.

We love to party.

(LAUGHTER) LEAH: We're just as normal as all the other families, and just lots of people think otherwise.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Meet Leah.

She's a 12-year-old who likes to play soccer and skateboard.

She lives in the Austin, Texas, area with her parents, John and Mary.

We aren't showing their faces and have changed their names for this story, because families like theirs are increasingly under threat.

Leah is a trans girl.

She started coming out to her family two years ago, first as a gay boy.

MARY, Mother of Leah: She was very much starting to talk more and more about how she was feeling and how she just didn't feel like she was in the right body.

And we were seeing it start to take its toll on her mental health.

There was just one night where everything just kind of came pouring out of her.

And she was just saying: "I don't know.

I don't know why I'm feeling like this.

I don't know what else to do."

We were sitting on the floor in her room and she was just sobbing in my lap.

And I just said: "Hey, Leah, what if I just told you can wake up tomorrow" -- sorry... LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: It's OK. MARY: ... "and be who you are?

": JOHN, Father of Leah: And that moment, tears in her eyes, frowning, when she realized: "Oh, I can."

The grin, it went from ear to ear, like immediately.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: John and Mary took Leah to Walmart to pick out new clothes.

LEAH: For so long, I wasn't being me.

And when I was able to just go through and get what I really wanted, wearing what I wanted, it just felt like I was so much more free.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: As Leah began to socially transition, wearing dresses and using her new name, her family became acutely aware of the world around them.

JOHN: If politics were out, wouldn't even be an issue.

This is Leah.

And we were just living our lives.

She's just doing her thing.

But politics, laws, ignorance has created the environment that we're in, and that we have to worry about all this stuff wherever we go.

DONALD TRUMP, Former President of the United States: The left-wing gender insanity being pushed on our children is an act of child abuse.

MICHAEL KNOWLES, Conservative Commentator: Transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely.

(APPLAUSE) REP. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE (R-GA): Free to kick the biological men out of the women's sports.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Leah's played soccer since she was 3.

It's her favorite sport.

But after her transition, she was dropped from the co-ed team.

She wanted to play with girls, but worried it would be too much of a fight.

And Leah just wanted to play.

So she joined the boys team.

She struggled, hearing the wrong pronouns at every practice.

LEAH: I just have always loved soccer.

I feel like that was kind of my escape.

And now it feels like I'm trying to escape from that now.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: In the months after Leah's social transition, she and her family started thinking about the medical treatments that could help make her body match her gender identity.

Since doctors say those treatments shouldn't begin before puberty, Leah would have to wait.

But her parents agreed to move forward when the time was right.

JOHN: We had our own fears of what a transition was like.

What is that going to do?

I mean, we would sit here day after day and just questions and research and figure stuff out.

The last two years, if you ask me if her as a 12-year-old can understand and wrap her head around what's going on and what she thinks she wants, damn right she does, because she's put more work in the last two years than most adults do in their whole lifetime, mentally speaking.

LEAH: Just being able to be me is really important to me, and it makes me feel great.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Gender-affirming care is endorsed by every major American medical association, and they say this treatment is safe and can be lifesaving.

Roughly 1.4 percent of U.S. youth, some 300,000, identify as transgender.

Each can take a slightly different path in their medical treatment or none at all.

Guidelines say care begins with a mental health evaluation.

From there, a young person can take reversible medication to pause puberty.

It gives the person time to consider the next step, either continue with puberty in their gender assigned at birth or receive hormones to make their body match their gender identity.

Those lead to some more permanent changes, like a lower voice or facial hair in transgender boys and breast development in transgender girls.

And, finally, there's surgery, which is rare for minors.

DR. JASON RAFFERTY, American Academy of Pediatrics: This medicine that we practice is incredibly individualized and nuanced.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Dr. Jason Rafferty is a pediatrician and child psychiatrist who wrote the American Academy of Pediatrics' policy statement supporting gender-affirming care.

DR. JASON RAFFERTY: What we see is that, starting with the social affirmation of creating a safe space and allowing people to express who they are, that it can really decrease and even normalize rates of depression, as well as suicidality.

We know that, in terms of medical interventions, that using puberty blockers appropriately, and even when using gender-affirming hormones appropriately, that, similarly, it can decrease negative mental health outcomes.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Despite that, Republican politicians with an eye toward 2024 continue to question rights for trans youth.

NIKKI HALEY (R), Presidential Candidate: How are we supposed to get our girls used to the fact that biological boys are in their locker rooms, and then we wonder why a third of our teenage girls seriously contemplated suicide last year?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: There's no evidence to support that connection.

In fact, it's transgender youth who faced consistently higher rates of depression and are about twice as likely as their peers to attempt suicide.

Republicans have also vilified doctors for providing gender-affirming care.

GOV.

RON DESANTIS (R-FL), Presidential Candidate: They will say it's health care to cut off the private parts of a 14- or 15-year-old?

That is not health care.

That is mutilation.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: How common is gender reassignment surgery on those under the age of 18?

DR. JASON RAFFERTY: Not very common at all.

It is really rare and it's the exception at this point to the rules and, for the most part, the guidelines that are in place.

Still, the issue has animated Republicans in states like Texas, who ordered child abuse investigations into parents of trans youth and made outlawing all medical treatments for trans minors a priority.

The American Civil Liberties Union tracked more than 50 bills targeting the rights of LGBTQ people in Texas this legislative session, more than any other state.

But perhaps no bill drew as much backlash as the one banning gender-affirming care for minors.

Despite trans advocates flooding the halls and chambers of the Texas Capitol for weeks, Governor Greg Abbott signed the bill into law on June 2.

It revokes the licenses of doctors who provide gender-affirming medical care to minors and requires anyone currently on treatment to be weaned off.

Republican Representative Tom Oliverson, an anesthesiologist who ushered the bill through the Texas House, rejects the medical establishment's consensus on gender-affirming care.

There are some estimated 30,000 kids in Texas between the age of 13 and 17 who identify as transgender.

What is your message to them?

STATE REP. TOM OLIVERSON (R-TX): My message to them is that we want you to get the mental health treatments that you need.

We want you to go through this process with therapists and counselors, figure out who you are.

And when you are an adult, you can make decisions for yourself.

We don't allow children in Texas to get tattoos.

We don't allow children in Texas to sign medical consents.

We don't allow children in Texas to drive.

It seems somewhat absurd to me that we would take a child's word for who they think they're going to be at age 30 at age 11.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Dr. Joshua Safer leads the Mount Sinai Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery in New York.

DR. JOSHUA SAFER, Mount Sinai Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery: When people wonder why the medical establishment has not thought of simply counseling people, treating this as a mental health condition, the short answer is, the medical establishment already thought that and spent decades thinking that and acting that.

And that's what has not worked.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Dr. Michelle Forcier is a professor of pediatrics at Brown University.

DR. MICHELLE FORCIER, Brown University: If I had a 10-year-old or an 8-year-old who told me their ear hurt, I wouldn't look at them and say you're only 8 or 10.

You don't know if your hurts, right?

It's important that we listen to kids.

It doesn't mean that a kid says, "I'm trans," and two hours later they get hormones.

It means that we respect kids as individuals.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: We asked Oliverson about Leah.

One of the kids that we have spoken to was in such pain, watching what was happening and what was unfolding in Texas because they live in Texas, they said: "I don't get why they all hate me.

They don't know me."

What do you say to that kid?

STATE REP. TOM OLIVERSON: Well, I mean, obviously I want that kid to get some mental health treatment, so that... LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: They have been going through mental health treatment for a long time.

STATE REP. TOM OLIVERSON: Well, good.

Good.

I mean, that is the appropriate treatment for mental health conditions.

And so I think, childhood, it can be tough sometimes.

I remember being an adolescent.

That's a tough time to figure out who you are and how you sort of fit into that collective of humanity.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Leah is now in puberty.

Since the new Texas law takes effect on September 1, her family's been forced to consider drastic steps to access puberty blockers.

MARY: After our last doctor's visit, we were feeling rushed by the law and were just like, OK, OK, if we do this, we have to go back in August.

So, maybe she can get the puberty blockers starting before September 1.

And it was just this, like, anxiety and this, like, if we don't do this now, what are we going to do?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: John and Mary are now looking at providers in New Mexico.

MARY: It feels like were being pushed out, pushed out of our home, pushed out of our state, pushed out of our jobs.

Like, if we go somewhere, what happens next?

And I don't want to feel like we're constantly on the run.

I don't want to feel like we're refugees in our own country.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: The thought of leaving is what weighs heaviest on Leah.

LEAH: We just have our whole life here.

And the last thing I want to do would be have to move.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Last week, I asked President Biden about Leah's family.

They're afraid.

They are considering leaving not just their state, but the country.

Sir, what do you say to parents like the ones that I spoke to who are contemplating leaving the country because they don't feel safe anymore?

JOE BIDEN, President of the United States: First of all, maybe quietly, when we finish this, you can give me the number of that family, and I will call them, let them know that the president and this administration has their back.

And I mean that.

JOHN: Hearing that was like, oh, finally, we -- with all the negative hate speech that we're hearing, you're actually hearing something positive.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Despite the reassurance, Leah's family is still grappling with what's happening in Texas.

MARY: Once, as a parent, you have been in a place where you have heard your child say that they do not want to live, seen the things we have seen her do to herself, we will do anything to never be back there, anything.

I don't see how that can be considered child abuse.

We're saving her.

We're saving her life.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Laura Barron-Lopez in Texas.