Jax Squire leans back on the exam table, lifting up his shirt.
The doctor pulls out a tube of blue jelly, squirts an arc onto Squire’s stomach.
In Texas and across the country, lawmakers are passing more laws focusing on gender identity. Amid the heated politics, the people impacted can get lost. Jax Squire — a trans, pregnant person living in rural North Texas — hopes his story will help others feel less alone.
“How are you feeling today?” Dr. Jeremy Johnson asks.
“Like a whale.”
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Johnson runs the sonogram — the black and white shapes shifting on the screen in time with the sweeping of the wand — and tells his patient the baby has flipped around. The baby’s head is down now, in the correct position for a smooth birth.
It’s a normal timeline for the flip, 35 weeks into the pregnancy and several weeks out from the due date. It’s also a sign, for Squire, that this birth is happening. Soon.
Squire, 23, is trans. His pronouns are he/they, meaning he’s comfortable with both he/him and they/them pronouns, although he doesn’t really care how people refer to him. He has not medically transitioned, so his uterus and ovaries are still functioning. That means Squire could become pregnant — and he did.
Squire has been pregnant before. This time, when he found out, he thought about whether he should carry the pregnancy to term.
There were reasons to think about alternatives, particularly financial reasons. He didn’t have a permanent place to live and was homeless through his first trimester. The pregnancy was also unplanned, and the other parent is not in Squire’s life.
But Squire decided to have the baby boy and place him for adoption.
“I couldn’t go through losing another one,” he said. “I feel like it would genuinely destroy me.”
Squire’s story blurs ideological lines. He is a trans person who has decided to carry an unplanned pregnancy and pursue adoption. He doesn’t fit neatly into a box.
Dr. Jeremy Johnson points to the sonogram during Jax Squire’s 35-week checkup on Monday, Dec. 15, 2025 at Faith Community Rural Health Clinic-Graham in Graham, TX.
Juan Figueroa / Staff Photographer
Squire lives in a small town in rural Texas, a state where trans people have felt attacked.
Gov. Greg Abbott has classified gender-affirming care for minors as “child abuse.” Texas lawmakers in 2023 banned gender-affirming care for minors. Two years later, legislators passed a bathroom ban that penalizes public agencies if they allow people to use bathrooms that differ from their birth sex. Texas state law now officially defines “male” and “female” based on a person’s reproductive system. After a 2025 state law, some Texas school districts no longer allow teachers to use a trans child’s chosen name.
While people who identify as trans make up less than 1% of the U.S. adult population, they’ve been the focus of national attention, too. In 2023, in response to state legislation across the country, the civil rights organization Human Rights Campaign declared a state of emergency for LGBTQ+ Americans.
Since then, the second Trump administration has issued numerous orders impacting trans people, including an order that recognizes two unchangeable sexes (“male” and “female”) and an order that federally incarcerated transgender women be housed in men’s prisons.
The lawmakers pushing these policies would deny the identities of trans people, in favor of the black-and-white idea of biological males and biological females.
Squire isn’t preoccupied by the attack against trans people. But he’s aware of it.
It’s part of the reason why, originally, Squire didn’t want everything about his life to be out in the open. There were some things — like the adoption plans — that he didn’t feel comfortable laying out on the stage of public scrutiny.
But he’s thought about it. And he’s changed his mind.
“I’m not gonna hide from it,” he said. “This is my story. This is how it happened.”
How he got here
It’s been less than a year since Squire moved to Graham, Texas, a town of fewer than 9,000.
Graham is about 120 miles west and a little north of Dallas, or about 90 miles northwest of Fort Worth. The nearest hospital with a labor and delivery unit is in the city of Jacksboro, about a 30-minute drive away.
Squire moved here — to a new city in a new state — in pursuit of stable housing. He was struggling in North Carolina, where he grew up.
A friend in North Texas offered to let him move in. Short on other options, and hopeful the Texas plan would work out, Squire moved.
It was May 2025. Exactly one week later, he found out he was pregnant. It was days before he was planning to start taking testosterone, a plan that went on pause when he found out about the pregnancy.
Jax Squire poses for a photo on Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025 at his home in Graham, TX.
Juan Figueroa / Staff Photographer
Less than a month after the pregnancy discovery, Squire’s housing fell through. He was homeless again. He stayed in a shelter in Graham for more than two months, sorting out his financial situation, saving money from his full-time job and coming to terms with the baby growing inside his uterus.
As the baby has grown, Squire has worked hard to reach stability. He saved up enough to get his own apartment, quit his second job so he’d be less worn out and started regular medical care at the clinic in town.
The OB appointment
On a Monday afternoon in mid-December, his 35-week checkup takes place.
Sitting in the waiting room of the rural health clinic, Squire plays a shooting game, Hunting Sniper, on his phone. Sometimes, he says, he plays Monopoly.
The waiting room fills up; The clinic is busy today. Half the time of an OB appointment, Squire says, is just waiting for your turn.
A clinic staffer calls out Squire’s name — they use his chosen name, Jax, but they also, in passing, use “she/her” pronouns. Squire doesn’t correct them, doesn’t miss a beat. He doesn’t much care how people refer to him.
Dr. Jeremy Johnson prepares Jax Squire for an ultrasound during Squire’s 35-week checkup on Monday, Dec. 15, 2025 at Faith Community Rural Health Clinic-Graham in Graham, TX.
Juan Figueroa / Staff Photographer
Dr. Johnson said he has treated trans patients before, but Squire is the first trans pregnant patient he’s had. Talking about Squire, Johnson uses he/him pronouns. For Squire, that was a wonderful surprise. He’s never had a doctor use his pronouns.
“I’m not the judge and jury on things,” Johnson said, “and I haven’t walked in his shoes and I haven’t gone through some of the prejudice that he’s gone through.”
Squire has, in many ways, been lucky to find Johnson as a doctor. To begin with, it can be hard to access pregnancy care at all in rural parts of Texas.
A family physician who also practices obstetrics, Johnson said his practice doesn’t prescribe hormones or help with gender transitions. He approaches all of his patients with compassion.
“I’m a faithful Christian. The biggest tenet of my faith is love, and that’s part of the reason why I’m a doctor,” Johnson said. “I didn’t get into this to try to make people feel alienated.”
Just like with his other patients, Johnson talks to Squire like someone he knows. This is not a stranger.
A white board reads, “In His hand, is the life of every living thing and the breath of all mankind,” as Jax Squire sits in the patient room for his 35-week checkup on Monday, Dec. 15, 2025 at Faith Community Rural Health Clinic-Graham in Graham, TX.
Juan Figueroa / Staff Photographer
At the appointment, Johnson asks, briefly, about Squire’s birth plan. He wants an epidural, right? “Hell yes.” And he’s still planning on no contact with the newborn baby, right?
Actually, Squire tells his doctor, he’s changed his mind.
Squire has decided he wants the full 48 hours with the baby, allotted by the state. He’s not afraid to bond anymore; he wants the skin-to-skin.
Johnson is surprised, at first, at the big change. But he’s glad to hear it. He thinks it’ll help the baby boy.
“That’ll be good,” Johnson tells Squire. “I think he’ll always treasure that.”
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‘I want him to be happy’
Squire doesn’t like to cry. “Don’t get emotional,” he tells himself out loud, time and again.
There are topics — heavy ones, weighty ones — that Squire talks about without coming close to tears. Topics like his repeated homelessness, across the last five years.
And then there are topics that bring tears, despite his best efforts:
Johnson’s reaction to Squire telling him that he would be doing skin-to-skin contact with the baby, a reversal from his previous decision.The thought of his dad, whom he looks up to as a role model.The fact that he’s putting his son up for adoption, and his hopes for a better life for the baby.
The adoption is a big one. Squire wants it to be as open as possible. He wants contact with the baby boy, he wants to see him when he can.
“I want him to know that I’m not just giving him up, not just abandoning him,” Squire says, “because I felt abandoned for years.”
Squire isn’t in a financial position to raise his baby. He moved to Texas, about eight months ago, with $16 to his name. He’s saved up, but babies are expensive. Squire wants his son to go to a home that can care for him well, in all ways.
“I want him to be happy, and I want him to feel loved, cared about,” Squire says. “I want him to go on trips and have adventures and fall off his bike and scrape his knee up.”
Even with his savings, Squire says, “It wouldn’t be enough to take care of him and to give him all of those things.”
Finding beauty
It’s late afternoon, out of the clinic and a little ways out of town. There’s still some time before the sun sets.
Squire squats down in a patch of dead grass along the edge of a creek. He reaches into his backpack and pulls out a plastic container with a red lid.
Cracking the lid open, he peers at the soil inside.
“Hello, beautifuls,” he croons. “Are you still alive?”
The pink-brown bodies of several worms wind through the soil. They wriggle, a little. Alive.
Jax Squire prepares his fishing line on Monday, Dec. 15, 2025 at a creek outside of Graford, TX.
Juan Figueroa / Staff Photographer
Squire baits a hook with one of the worms and struggles to his feet, a more difficult task at 35 weeks pregnant. “Sorry, my butt’s out,” he laughs as he hikes his pants back up.
At the creek edge, he casts the fishing line out into the water. He’s fished here once before, but he isn’t sure what type of fish might bite.
He doesn’t, actually, expect to catch anything. For Squire, that’s not the point.
“It’s how peaceful it is,” he says. “The way the water moves.”
As he talks, his voice is muffled by the sound of traffic trundling by on the overpass of Texas State Highway 16, a stone’s throw away. A truck hauls by on one of the adjacent roads, closer, loud.
Squire doesn’t seem to notice. He is reverent as he talks about the peacefulness.
There are birds, their songs and calls rising to the surface when the traffic quiets. (A cardinal, a titmouse, a wren.) There’s the creek, circular ripples appearing where small fish disturb the water. There’s a chill in the air and there’s a fishing pole in Squire’s hand.
Jax Squire fishes on Monday, Dec. 15, 2025 at a creek outside of Graford, TX.
Juan Figueroa / Staff Photographer
This whole place is beautiful, in Squire’s eyes. Driving to the fishing spot, Squire pointed out the low hills, and a canyon-like cut of stone near the road. Driving back, he takes out his phone for a picture of the last dregs of a sunset, pinky-orange and disappearing behind a hill.
“Wow,” he says. “That’s gorgeous.”
He likes the Dairy Queen in town where, he says, you can eat ice cream and watch planes take off from the municipal airport.
These are things that could feel mundane. Jax sees the beauty, and it rocks him back on his heels.
A little less alone
During this pregnancy, Squire has felt alone.
He’s never known anyone who was pregnant — “I’m the first pregnant person that I’ve ever met,” he said — let alone a trans pregnant person. (It’s difficult to find data on pregnant trans and nonbinary people, although researchers and advocates say the visibility of trans pregnancy is growing.)
Squire’s pregnancy has, in some ways, challenged his self-perception and made it harder to feel like himself.
His pregnancy has also led to some unwanted questioning by people who don’t understand how he could be pregnant in the first place.
When people ask him that, Squire said, “I just look at them and say, ‘How did your wife get pregnant with your kid?’ I still got all the parts of a woman.”
It bothers him, this idea that he must be a woman because he’s pregnant. He thinks that, if he’d even read about a trans pregnant person, in a story like this one, it would’ve made him feel less alone.
“This isn’t a topic that’s talked about,” he said. “A pregnant trans guy, are you kidding me?”
“I feel like there’s a lot of people who have to stay quiet about this kind of thing, and I don’t want that. I don’t want people to think that you have to stay quiet about it.”
He hopes that people will read about his story. He hopes that some trans and non-binary people will see themselves in it. He hopes that someone, even just one person, will hear about him and feel a little less alone.