Idaho pushed anti-trans laws for years. Then a teen died.

The life and death of May Pollard, 16, provides a window into the tragic effect that legislation and political rhetoric have had on trans people in America.

BOISE, Idaho — After May Pollard died on a late-January morning, a detective asked her parents a question: Had anyone wanted to hurt her?

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“A lot of America,” her mother answered.

Less than an hour earlier, Elyse Thorpe had found her daughter’s body inside their home, called 911 and sobbed as she tried to revive her. May, an avid poet and gamer, had been struggling and increasingly withdrawn.

Now, at 16, she was gone. And the detective, from the Boise Police Department, wanted to know what Elyse meant.

“There is a huge amount of animosity, every single day, thrown at trans kids,” Joseph Pollard replied, voice rising. “The whole f-----g country. The whole f-----g administration, every single f-----g day.”

His raw fury came from the years of pain he and Elyse watched May endure since she came out as a transgender girl. She avoided eating or drinking at school for fear that she would need to go to the bathroom — and she panicked when she had to use the one for boys. She talked of hurting herself if she couldn’t start taking estrogen. She hated how state laws highlighted the only way she was different when she longed to fit in.

It was more than what any kid should have to go through.

“You worry about that hatred being internalized, and that’s what happened to my kid,” Elyse told NBC News. “It got inside.”

Suicide is complex. It stems from a combination of causes, such as mental health conditions, and cannot be attributed to any one factor. But May’s life and death provide a glimpse into the tremendous and tragic effect that anti-trans laws and political rhetoric have had on trans people across America — especially kids. As May navigated the already overwhelming emotions most teenagers feel, dozens of conservative states and the Trump administration enacted measures defining sex as something that’s unchangeable and determined at birth, limiting transition-related care for minors as well as some adults , and barring trans girls and women from playing on female sports teams .

In Idaho alone, within the last few years of May’s life, state legislators proposed more than four dozen bills aimed at LGBTQ rights, and Gov. Brad Little signed 15 into law, according to the American Civil Liberties Union . Many targeted youth, banning trans minors from getting treatments like puberty blockers and hormone therapy and prohibiting classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in public K-12 schools.

State lawmakers who supported the bills have said their intent is to protect children. Healthcare for trans kids hasn’t been studied enough , they said, and during school, students shouldn’t be exposed to information about sexual orientation and gender in ways their parents find inappropriate.

“We need to stop sterilizing and mutilating children under the age of 18,” state Rep. Bruce Skaug, a Republican who sponsored the state’s transition care ban for minors, said when the measure passed the House in 2022 .

May had been aware of what was happening. She wrote poetry that she shared with friends about not fitting in and self-harm. One of her favorite songs, by the noise pop band Stomach Book, was about trans identity and oppression. She wanted to be a teenage girl, not an activist, playing video games with her friends and exchanging silly messages about cats and music.

But she also felt that what she — and other trans kids — experienced was unfair.

Last summer, she joined a lawsuit under the pseudonym Jane Doe to challenge a state law that banned trans students in K-12 schools from using bathrooms or locker rooms aligning with their gender identities. The law had forced her to use gender-neutral bathrooms at school, effectively outing her.

“I don’t want people to know I am transgender without my consent — even students who might be friendly,” May said in a case filing last fall . “I find being forced to use a separate restroom ostracizing, and I feel like I’m being treated like this other kind of thing.”

Throughout the last few years, advocates and doctors have camped outside of state representatives’ offices and stayed late at capitol buildings, including in Idaho , to oppose anti-trans bills, sharing stories of trans friends and loved ones who attempted or died by suicide. Research has shown, they told lawmakers, that trans youth are at increased risk of self-harm, especially when they don’t have access to treatment like hormone therapy. Being transgender, they stressed, does not make a person inherently more prone to suicide, but the climate they face can pose a threat to mental health.

“The parents go and testify, and we say, ‘Children are going to die,’” Elyse said. “We tell the legislators that, and they dismiss it. I guess they think it’s hyperbole, or they think it’s hysteria, or they think it’s an acceptable outcome, probably some mix of those things. So I don’t understand why there is an unwillingness to connect these laws to these outcomes. It was right there from the start.”

She had watched the toll they took on her daughter.

As a young child , May had boundless energy and intense curiosity.

She loved to plan summer days with her big brother, Axel, like trips to the zoo in Salt Lake City, where the sloths mesmerized her. She was so enamored with the gentle, misunderstood creatures, her mom said, that for years, “sloth” became her shorthand for “I’m really happy.”

When she was a toddler, her parents, both state employees, divorced and she split her time between their homes growing up.

May excelled in her studies, taking high-school-level math in junior high. But starting in seventh grade, she became less engaged, easily upset and irritable, her teachers told Elyse. Not long after, she was diagnosed with autism. A doctor also prescribed her anti-depressants.

She started to change in other ways, too: She grew her hair long and chose glasses from a women’s display at an Eyemart Express near their home. She asked her mom for bows to wear in her hair.

“Come out, come out!” Elyse remembers thinking. “I’m ready to help you, but you have to tell me.”

May came out to her dad during her eighth grade year. She texted him one day, out of the blue, explaining that she identified as a girl and hoped he would support her.

“I support you, 100%,” he remembers telling her. “I want you to be who you are, and it’s not a problem with me.”

Over the course of several months, May slowly came out to her mom over a series of evening conversations in her bedroom.

One night, she reclined against a pillow on her twin bed, Pokemon stuffies decorating the surrounding shelves, and told her mom that she had a decision to make.

Elyse, sitting cross-legged on the floor, listened.

May talked about her gender but also what sounded like contemplations of self-harm.

“What she knew was that her body was unlivable,” Elyse said, “and she wasn’t sure what we could do about that.”

Her parents supported her switching schools, starting therapy, changing her name and developing what her mom described as her signature “goth cottagecore” style. One of her favorite looks included a long-sleeved pink button-up shirt with a lace collar and pockets paired with a skirt and black high-top Converse.

As she got older, May spent more time in her room. Elyse enjoyed hearing her play video games behind her closed door, laughing and “good-naturedly swearing.”

She made a tradition of attending PAX West, an annual gaming conference in Seattle, with her dad. May would shed her quiet and reserved manner, teaming up with strangers for tournaments. Last year, she went in cosplay as a character from one of her favorite games, posing for selfies when, at home, she wouldn’t allow her family to take photos of her.

“She would always come home from that conference with so much confidence,” Joseph said.

May tried to settle into herself but found living in Idaho made it harder. In ninth grade, May confided in her dad that she was struggling with suicidal thoughts and made a plan to harm herself. She said she needed to medically transition, but she knew she couldn’t under state law until she turned 18. She asked her dad if he could use her Christmas money to buy hormones online.

Her parents recognized her increasing need for treatment. Elyse took May to her pediatrician, who wrote her a referral to receive care in Oregon. After spending several months on a waitlist, May and Elyse flew to Portland in the fall of May’s sophomore year, when she was 15, so she could start estrogen.

She had to visit the doctor every six months. Once Trump took office and began a federal crackdown on gender-affirming treatment for young people, Elyse drove more than 13 hours round trip for the visits because she worried about creating a federal record of flying for transition care.

The treatment brightened May. Her mom said it seemed like, for the first time in a long time, May wanted to live. But anytime there was even a small delay in filling her prescription, she would become more anxious and withdrawn.