by Lynette Alice

Created on: March 28, 2008   Last Updated: January 23, 2009

Whether or not prison inmates should receive gender reassignment surgery (GRS) at taxpayers expense is a much simpler question to answer than many would think. That answer is yes. That may shock, enrage, and befuddle many people but it is the correct answer.

Often times people hearing that positive response jump up on their soapbox and begin spouting off one argument after another against this stance which are in all honesty irrelevant. The reasons this happens so often is people do not understand the reasons behind why this is necessary on a multitude of levels.

For starters Gender Identity Disorder (GID- Also known as transsexualism and Harry Benjamin's Syndrome) is a congenital medical condition recognized in the DSMIV as such. In almost every major industrialized nation and other nations with less than stellar records on human rights like Iran this is easily and openly accepted. In the U.S. however it is a hot button topic based on the view of transsexualism from the "Moral Christian Conservatives", and more directly insurance companies failure to recognize it is a true and treatable condition, and not a fetish or an action carried out on a whim.

The only known treatment to successfully treat transsexualism is GRS. Nothing from electroshock therapy, hypnosis, anti-psychotic drugs, psychiatry, aversion behavior therapy, or prayer, has ever successfully treated this condition. Without treatment the person suffering from GID often ends up suicidal and at times does act out in anti social ways due to the long term suppression of something so basic as individual identity.

Unlike what many people think GRS is only considered an elective procedure in the U.S. which is a break from the major (And most minor) European and Asian nations. Even our neighbor to the north, Canada, recognizes this as a necessary procedure to meet medical needs including the incarcerated. The biggest reason the U.S. does not recognize this as such is because the procedure can be expensive and insurance companies simply do not want to foot the bill for such treatment as part of a basic coverage agreement. Even insures that do offer some coverage for this condition will only do so through large corporations (At increased blanket premiums) and not for individuals. Money is the usual suspect in cases like this.

There are many that ask why any person in prison much less a person on death row for a heinous crime would deserve such treatment. Quite simply they are wards of the state or in some

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