Army Private Chelsea Manning (photo), an imprisoned transgender soldier whose thirty-five-year sentence for leaking classified information was commuted by President Barack Obama this week, will lose her military health benefits because she is due to receive a dishonorable discharge.
Manning was born Bradley Manning, but publicly changed her identity in 2013, the same year she was transferred from the Marine Corps Brig in Quantico, Virginia. to the Army's prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
The Army has been providing transgender treatments to Manning and determined she qualified for gender reassignment surgery. Under the terms of her dishonorable discharge, Manning will no longer have access to those benefits when she is released from prison in May of 2017.
"If Private Manning is discharged with a dishonorable discharge, she will lose her entitlement to military benefits, including gender-transition care at military medical treatment facilities," Army spokeswoman Cynthia Smith told USA Today.
Manning stole hundreds of thousands of classified documents related to American military actions in the Middle East and gave them to WikiLeaks in 2010. She was serving as an intelligence analyst in Iraq at the time.
President Barack Obama announced Tuesday he was commuting Manning's sentence to seven years, but she will be given a dishonorable discharge.
19 January 2017
Manning outed
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