by Amanda Ines

Created on: January 31, 2011   Last Updated: November 15, 2011

Excuse me, but I am not sure whether I have heard or read right or whether this question should indeed have ever been asked in the first place, you know the one that asks "Should prisoners receive sex change surgery at tax payer's expense"! 

In the first place any kind of plastic surgery is an operation that is not totally necessary. Well it may in fact be necessary in the minds of those people who want to undergo it due to their wanting bigger boobs, a tighter bum or a smaller nose, but none of these ailments is in any way life-threatening and so this kind of surgery should strictly fall under a category which could be called 'luxury whim surgery'. 

If people can afford to fork out for this expensive surgery well then it is up to them. They have presumably worked hard to earn their money and no one can tell them what they can or not spend their money on. 

And if a prisoner were to fall ill during his stay at one of the government's establishments, or in plain words a prison, then it would be only human to provide him with the necessary medical care enabling him to recover from his ailment and if this also involved surgery then so be it as well. But in the same breath it cannot in any way be seen as reasonable for the hard working people out there who pay their taxes to have to contribute to the sex change of a prisoner. 

A sex change operation is definitely 'luxury whim surgery' and when one thinks that the prisoner has been locked up precisely because he has done harm to society or property, why should he be granted any luxury rights and why should the precise society who he has hurt be made to pay out for his luxury operation of a sex change? He is in there to learn a lesson, to be punished for what he has done and in some cases even to become a better person. 

Years ago sex change operations didn't even exist. Years ago homosexuals and lesbians stayed inside their wardrobes and it is only because nowadays everything has become so much freer that they are able to voice their own opinions, beliefs and of course their sexual preferences. And this is all very well for them to do while they are free and conforming to the rules of society but it is certainly not an option for them when they have been locked up for committing crimes against society. Why should society then, after having seen the crimes that they have done, want to pay for anything extra for them other than the bare minimum?

The only case where I would agree paying for the surgery performed on a prisoner for something that was not life-threatening would be the castration of a mass rapist!

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