Chelsea Manning to get gender-reassignment surgery, Army tells lawyer: report

The former Army sergeant serving a 35-year prison sentence for espionage will be able to get gender-reassignment surgery, according to a Buzzfeed report.

Chelsea Manning agreed to end a hunger strike that began Sept. 9 to force the military into providing the surgery, Chase Strangio, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer working for Manning, told Buzzfeed.

“I am unendingly relieved that the military is finally doing the right thing. I applaud them for that. This is all that I wanted — for them to let me be me,” Manning said in a statement given to Buzzfeed via attorneys.

Nevertheless, the statement by Manning, who, like most other long-term prison inmates has no obvious means of paying for the surgery personally, chided the military for not agreeing sooner.

Manning also continued to rail against the Army’s hair length requirements for men, which will continue to be applied until her surgery.

“But it is hard not to wonder why it has taken so long. Also, why were such drastic measures needed? The surgery was recommended back in April 2016. The recommendations for my hair length were back in 2014,” Manning said, according to Buzzfeed.

Mr. Strangio said Manning was told Tuesday that the military had decided that “in-service transition” rules apply in this case and provided the inmate-spy with information about the surgery and the needed medical team.

An Army spokesman would neither confirm nor deny the decision to BuzzFeed. “We cannot and will not discuss the medical needs of individuals,” he said.

In addition to the espionage sentence for providing WikiLeaks with classified information about the U.S. war on terrorism, Manning faces charges related to a suicide attempt this summer.

The first BuzzFeed commenter, who identified himself as “Joe Harmison,” immediately zeroed in on the issue of “who pays?”

“Oh [expletive]. Sorry to be so harsh, and I have no problem with her wanting to transition. I have a problem with who is paying for it. So a person who is not a criminal has to come up with the money to transition. If they can’t? Chance of suicide. But this treasonous lowlife gets to do it on our dime? Again, [expletive],” he wrote.