A California inmate serving a life
sentence has become the first prisoner to receive state-funded
sex-reassignment surgery.
According to the AP, Shiloh Heavenly
Quine, a 57-year-old convicted murderer, had the procedure performed
at a hospital in San Francisco, her attorneys confirmed on Friday.
Quine, who has been on hormone therapy
since 2009 and has attempted suicide multiple times, sued the state
for the right to undergo the procedure. Her case, settled last year,
led to California becoming the first state in the nation to allow
transgender inmates to obtain gender affirmation surgery.
Quine said in court documents that she
identified as female as early as age 9 and tried to castrate herself
when she was about 19, three years before she entered the prison
system.
Kris Hayashi, executive director of the
Transgender Law Center, represents Quine and other transgender
inmates.
“For too long, institutions have
ignored doctors and casually dismissed medically necessary and
lifesaving care for transgender people just because of who we are,”
Hayashi
told the AP.
California officials have approved four
additional requests for sex-reassignment surgeries.
(Related: Tony
Perkins: Transgender people will “sign up” to go to prison for
“free surgery.”)