CANADIAN COURT ORDERS PRISONS TO PAY FOR SEX CHANGE OPERATIONS

OTTAWA, February 7, 2003 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A federal court judge has ordered Canada’s federal prison system (i.e. the taxpayers) to pay for sex-change operations for so-called “transsexual” inmates who ask for it.  “If the medical opinion is that sex reassignment surgery [sic] is an essential service for a particular inmate, it follows that it should be paid for by Correctional Services Canada, as would any other essential medical service,” wrote Madam Justice Carolyn Layden-Stevenson of the Federal Court of Canada.  The Corrections and Conditional Release Act, which governs the prison system, requires “essential” health services for inmates. The department argued that sex changes are similar to tattoo removal (non-essential), but Madam Justice Layden-Stevenson based her ruling on the prevailing view in Canada that a patient “diagnosed” with “gender dysphoria,” the “medical” term [sic] for persons who believe they are the wrong sex, must be covered by prisons as they are by medicare in most provinces.  The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal issued the original ruling in 2001 in favour of convicted killer Synthia Kavanagh (né Ricky Chaperon), 41, who filed a discrimination claim after officials refused to allow him a sex-change operation, approved before he was sent down for the 1989 murder of his “transvestite” associate, Lisa (i.e., Leo) Black in Toronto.  For media coverage see:  https://www.nationalpost.com/utilities/story.html?id={76C65BBA-EDF5-4BD2-9318-EA53933B43A4}  or try the search engine using the inmates’ names.