Every time Robert Skrezyna gets a new message from his child’s medical provider, he braces himself for bad news.

He worries that any day now, Lurie Children’s Hospital is going to follow the lead of other Chicago-area hospitals and tell him it’s no longer providing gender-affirming care to kids — teens like his 15-year-old daughter, Chloe, who relies on hormone therapy.

“She’s not going to go back to being a boy because she never was one,” said Skrezyna, noting Chloe knew she was a girl from a very young age. He spoke as Chloe, smiling, ran to different activity stations at a family field day for transgender children and adults at a Lombard park on a recent, sunny fall day.

He now worries about her happiness falling apart. If gender-affirming care were no longer available to teens, “I’m

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