(Headline USA) A group of transgender veterans filed a lawsuit Thursday seeking to force the Department of Veterans Affairs to begin providing and paying for sex-change surgeries.
The lawsuit from the Transgender American Veterans Association seeks to compel the VA to codify in its regulations verbal assurances the department has made that it would begin providing those services, said Rebekka Eshler, the president of the association.
Eshler said the surgeries were needed to reduce the risk of suicides, depression and psychological distress for mentally ill transgender people who live with gender dysphoria but somehow managed to pass the military’s stringent screening requirements.
“It would also mean that those veterans do not have to seek this care through private doctors, which is often prohibitively expensive,” the transgender veterans association said in its lawsuit, which it said was filed in the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington.
A VA spokesperson said it does not comment on ongoing litigation. But he pointed to 2021 statements from Veteran Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough, who said the VA was beginning a years long rulemaking process that would result in providing gender-affirming surgeries.
McDonough said the VA would use the time to “develop capacity to meet the surgical needs” of transgender veterans.
The decision, he said, will allow “transgender vets to go through the full gender confirmation [sic] process with VA by their side.”
The veterans first petitioned for the rule change in May of 2016. Since then, has VA has held hearings and prepared multiple proposed rules for cost-benefit analysis, the association said.
But while the VA currently provides hormone therapy and other services to transgender veterans at some locations, it has failed to change its rules in a timely manner and provide any coverage for the surgeries, the group said.
“I get phone calls from veterans that are so in crisis that they are calling us because they can’t handle it anymore and they are wanting to go kill themselves,” Eshler said.
Natalie Kastner, a 39-year-old disabled veteran from Texas, went to the VA in 2022 seeking surgery. When doctors there denied the request, Kastner took a knife and attempted self castration.
The untrained surgeon hit an artery and almost died, but doctors were able to save Kastner’s life.
“I did not go into that bathroom looking to kill myself,” Kastner said. “I went into that bathroom looking to fix myself. I can only imagine how many others have done the same and have not been so lucky and have simply been listed as a suicide.”
Eshler hoped the lawsuit would force the government to standardize the medical attention transgender veterans receive, which can vary from state to state and even clinic to clinic.
LGBT activists also may be looking to codify as many practices into law as they can in the event that the Biden administration is voted out of office in November.
Former President Donald Trump reversed an Obama-era policy that allowed transgenders to serve openly in the military and withdrew all federal funding for healthcare related to sex-change procedures.
While some on the Left see transgenderism as an identity group on the LGBT spectrum, skeptics regard it as a lifestyle choice, often comingled with perversion and sexual deviancy, that has no business manifesting itself in the Armed Services, much less being supported and enabled by the U.S. military.
The lawsuit asks the court to compel the VA to respond to the 2016 petition within 30 days.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
