Being a man of a certain age, I can remember when the point of putting someone in prison — the basic purpose of them being in prison — was that they were being punished. Prison is supposed to be unpleasant. Not cruel and unusual, but unpleasant. The whole idea is that people who have been in prison shouldn't want to go back.
Part of that punishment is deprivation. Prisoners are denied their liberty, of course. They have been through due process, been allowed to confront their accusers, had legal representation, and were convicted by a jury of their peers. Now, they are being punished by being denied not only their liberty but also certain constitutional rights. They don't get to choose (or, at best, have limited choices) what they eat, where they sleep, and who they are housed with.
But apparently, the Biden Justice Department thinks that they should receive gender-transition surgery at taxpayer expense. This issue has come to a head in a Utah case, where a prisoner, denied (rightly) gender-transition surgery at taxpayer expense, self-castrated. Now, the Justice Department is suing Utah.
The Justice Department filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the state of Utah and its prison system after a transgender inmate “removed her own testicles” in response to “unnecessarily delayed” treatment for her gender dysphoria.
The lawsuit alleges that the incarcerated transgender woman – unnamed in the complaint – was discriminated against by the Utah Department of Corrections following “multiple requests to UDOC staff for treatment for gender dysphoria, including multiple requests for hormone therapy” upon entering the state prison system in 2021.
The inmate was diagnosed with gender dysphoria in June 2022, nine months after she first requested hormone therapy, and the hormones were not provided to her until January 2023, according to the complaint.
Why were they provided at all? In what sane world should the taxpayers be on the hook for this? Yes, certainly, inmates are held by the state, and the state should be responsible for taking care of them when they are sick or injured. But why should the taxpayers be paying for elective treatments like this?
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More troubling, this is part of a larger effort by the Biden administration's Justice Department.
The Justice Department said in a statement that the lawsuit is “part of its broader efforts to combat discrimination against individuals with gender dysphoria.”
“People with gender dysphoria, including those held in jails and prisons, are protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act and are entitled to equal access to medical care just like anyone else with a disability,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a statement.
Here's what's wrong with that statement: The people we are talking about here aren't "...just like anyone else with a disability." There are several reasons.
First: It's not at all clear how "gender dysphoria" is a disability, even if we accept that these persons are properly diagnosed under the historic definition, which was until recently typically treated with therapy, not surgery. In what way are these people disabled? What abilities do they lack that others possess?
Second: They aren't "...like anyone else." They are prisoners. They are convicted felons who are being punished. The problem here isn't that the Utah corrections people delayed giving this prisoner treatment; it's that the prisoner was given treatment at all when the answer should have been, "Sorry, you're in prison. You're here to be punished. No deal."
Third and finally: There is one way the prison system failed here, and that was that somehow this person had an instrument with which to self-castrate. But that's a separate issue, and one that prisons have struggled with since there have been prisons. Prisoners have shown great creativity in producing and hiding "shivs," and that's going to continue to be an issue.
This inmate clearly has some serious mental health issues, and, yes, the prison system should have taken note of them and dealt with them. But soaking the taxpayers for horrendously expensive "gender confirming" treatment and surgery isn't the answer. Prisons do have mental health care providers; if there's any population that really needs that, it's prisoners. But these people are being punished. There's no reason that the taxpayers should also be punished by having to pay for expensive and elective treatments.
