Chelsea Manning, a U.S. Army private now serving a 30-year prison sentence for providing hundreds of thousands of documents to WikiLeaks, will receive gender reassignment surgery, the American Civil Liberties Union said.
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U.S. Army solider Chelsea Manning, who was convicted of espionage, announced a self-imposed hunger strike last week to demand taxpayer-funded gender reassignment surgery.
Private Manning, who announced her transition to female in 2013, is now imprisoned in Fort Leavenworth military prison after leaking details of classified government documents concerning alleged war crimes and rights abuses via WikiLeaks.
Wayne Hall, a media relations officer for the Army, said he would provide a statement shortly. She is also facing charges stemming from a suicide attempt in July. The lawsuit also requested access to “female grooming standards”, since under current Army rules, Manning is barred from growing her hair long.
She said in a statement through her lawyers, “I am unendingly relieved that the military is finally doing the right thing”.
“As I transition into this next phase of my life, I want everyone to know the real me”, Manning wrote in a statement released to the media by her lawyers. She began receiving hormone therapy in February 2015 after the ACLU reached an agreement with the Pentagon. “I applaud them for that”, Manning said.
The Department of Defence this year relaxed an ongoing ban on transgender people serving in the military, which had previously impacted Manning’s treatment as she is held in a military prison. Despite recommendations dating back to 2014 that she be allowed to grow her hair out, the military has not allowed her to do so.
Since first taken into custody in 2010, Manning was forced to serve out her sentence in an all-male prison, was subjected to long stretches of solitary confinement. Those denials led Manning to launch the hunger strike, even though she noted there was a possibility she could become incapacitated or die as a result.
No prisoner in the United States has ever received gender reassignment surgery.
A Department of Defense memo dated June 30, 2016, overturned a ban on open service by transgender people in the military and made it clear that the military would allow active service members to transition genders.
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The Army did not announce a change in its policy enforcing male hair length standards for Manning.
