The Pentagon has approved Army Private Chelsea Manning’s request to move forward with gender transition surgery while she serves times for convictions related to sharing hundreds of thousands of sensitive military and diplomatic documents with WikiLeaks, the soldier said Tuesday.
“Last week I was given the ’good news’ that the Department of Defense will grant my request to see a surgeon for treatment related to my gender dysphoria,” the 28-year-old former Army intelligence analyst wrote in an editorial published by The Guardian.
“Although I don’t have anything in writing, I was shown a memorandum with my name on it that confirmed the military is moving forward with my request. Everything that they have presented to me leads me to believe that they are going to provide the care that has been recommended by my doctor. I have requested this for nearly a year,” she added.
Manning was diagnosed with gender dysphoria — the condition of identifying with a gender opposite to one’s biological sex – prior to being sentenced in 2013 over charges stemming for her role with the antisecrecy website. She began publicly identifying herself as a transwoman the day after she was sentenced to 35 years in military prison, and has legally changed her name from Bradley Manning and begun hormone therapy with the blessing of the Defense Dept. while behind bars.
The soldier’s psychologist recommended she receive surgery related to her gender dysphoria in April 2016, and Manning attempted suicide in July as a result of the lack of care she claims to be receiving while serving her sentence in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. She embarked on a hunger strike earlier this month to protest what she described as “constant and overzealous administrative scrutiny by prison and military officials,” but ended that demonstration last week upon the Pentagon’s decision to let her seek surgery.
Manning is now expected to become the first transgender inmate to receive gender affirming surgical treatment while incarcerated at any U.S. prison, military, state or federal, her attorneys with the American Civil Liberties Union said.
Under new Department of Defense policy taking effect in October, “service members with a diagnosis from a military medical provider indicating that gender transition is medically necessary will be provided medical care and treatment for the diagnosed medical condition.”
“This medical care is absolutely vital for Chelsea as it is for so many transgender people — in and out of prison — who are systemically denied treatment solely because they are transgender,” Manning’s attorney, Chase Strangio, said in a statement last week.
“Thankfully the government has recognized its constitutional obligation to provide Chelsea with the medical care that she needs and we hope that they will act without delay to ensure that her suffering does not needlessly continue.”
Despite Manning’s “good news,” however, she wrote in her latest editorial that she still faces the possibility of indefinite solitary confinement over her failed suicide attempt. She’s expected to present her case to the disciplinary board at Fort Leavenworth at a closed hearing Tuesday.
“I lack the words to express how deeply pained I am about this board and the fact that the government is pursuing my punishment so aggressively. How am I supposed to explain this to my family? How am I going to explain this to future generations when they look back and ask how I could have been punished for my own desperation? I have absolutely no idea. I have no idea how to explain it at all,” she wrote for The Guardian.
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