Chelsea Manning to undergo gender transition surgery

Chelsea Manning, the Army private sentenced to 35 years in prison for passing along classified files to WikiLeaks, will undergo gender transition surgery, the American Civil Liberties Union announced Tuesday.

Manning, 28, a former intelligence analyst in Iraq, was convicted in 2013 of giving more than 700,000 documents, videos, and cables to WikiLeaks. Known at the time as Bradley Manning, she later announced she identified as a woman, and in 2015, she began hormone therapy. This July, her attorneys said she attempted suicide because she was being denied the appropriate treatment for her gender dysphoria, a condition where a person feels their physical gender is opposite of the one they identify with.

On Friday, Manning began a hunger strike, but said on Tuesday she ended it now that the Army has allowed her to undergo the surgery, recommended by her psychologist in April. "I am unendingly relieved that the military is finally doing the right thing," Manning said in a statement. "I applaud them for that. This is all I wanted — for them to let me be me." The ACLU says never before has a transgender inmate undergone such surgical treatment while incarcerated, The Guardian reports.

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