Four months after President Donald Trump announced a ban on transgender people serving in the military, the Pentagon is ready to pay a gender-reassignment surgery for an active-duty military member. According to the Pentagon’s spokesperson Dana White, the military member received sex-reassignment surgery on Tuesday in a private hospital because military hospitals didn’t have the surgical expertise to perform that type of surgery.
“Because this service member had already begun a sex-reassignment course of treatment, and the treating doctor deemed this surgery medically necessary, a waiver was approved by the director of the Defense Health Agency. The Supplemental Health Care Program will cover this surgery in accordance with the Department’s interim guidance on transgender Service members,” White said.
The soldier is an infantry officer who identifies as female, NBC News reports. She fought in Afghanistan. Back in August, president Trump signed a memo barring transgender individuals from serving in the military and to stop the military from paying for this kind of surgeries, but a federal judge temporarily blocked his. Officials at the Defense Department had been telling transgender military members that they could stay in the military even before the judge ruled to block Trump’s ban, at least while the Pentagon decides how to handle the ban.
Trump announced his ban in July. At that time he wrote on Twitter that U.S. forces could not afford the tremendous medical costs and disruption of transgender service members. According to The New York Times, the surgery is a clear sign that Trump’s ban is a long way from being put into effect.
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