Transgender Veterans Call for U.S. To Pay for Sex-Change Surgeries

Transgender veterans are suing the US Department of Veteran Affairs (VA), calling for the government to pay for sex-change surgeries.

On Thursday, the Transgender American Veterans Association (TAVA) filed a federal lawsuit against the VA, seeking an “order that the VA act on TAVA’s 2016 rulemaking petition for gender-confirmation surgery,” according to a press release.

“Nearly eight years since TAVA submitted its rulemaking petition asking the VA to provide this essential and lifesaving medical care, and more than two years since Secretary McDonough pledged to make this care available, the VA has failed to act,” the release says. “The VA’s delay endangers the health and well-being of many of the nation’s 163,000 transgender veterans. It also violates the VA’s legal obligations.”

President of TAVA Rebekka Eshler said that “transgender people’s true inclusion in the military” includes “healthcare” services.

TAVA member Natalie Kastner claimed that the inability to have sex-change surgery was “more dangerous” than serving in the military.

“VA’s failure to provide gender-confirmation surgery has been more dangerous for me than my time in the service,” Kastner said. “Without VA coverage for this surgery, I was financially out of options. I tried to perform my own gender-affirming surgery at home, without any medical training. Were it not for emergency room care, I would have lost my life. I was told that the VA would take care of me because I was willing to risk my life for this country. Instead, I was safer in the service than I am now.”

Kastner told Military.com that the VA is “letting us die. They are letting us needlessly die.”

Meanwhile, a Finnish study found that gender reassignment (GR) surgeries do not benefit the patient’s mental health.

Those with gender dysphoria have “many more common psychiatric needs than do their matched population controls, even when medical GR interventions are carried out,” the study said.

The authors added that as the number of individuals contacting gender identity services (GIS) has increased, “their needs for psychiatric treatment have increased.”

“Both before and after contacting GIS, they present with many more common psychiatric needs than do their matched population controls, even when medical GR interventions are carried out,” they wrote, adding, “This vastly increased pursuit of GR with increases in psychiatric comorbidities warrants cautious assessment of the timeliness of medical GR and of other treatment needs that may be more urgent.”