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Britain Allows Members of Armed Forces to Change Sex
Britain's Ministry of Defense said on Sunday it had allowed up to five members of the armed forces to have sex change operations.
A Reuters report quoted a ministry spokeswoman as saying that the ministry's medical services did not have the surgeons to conduct such operations, and referred interested soldiers to the National Health Service (NHS).
"If a member of the armed forces wants that done, they will go on the NHS waiting list. We don't have the surgical expertise to be able to do gender re-assignment operations," she said.
But she said the ministry would pay the hormone therapy treatment linked to the operations.
The therapy treatment may be dispensed by regimental medical officers, "in which case, we would pay for that", said the spokeswoman.
She added that the NHS had a requirement for people who wanted such operations to "spend time living the life of the gender they want to be re-assigned to" before having the procedure.
"We do allow them to do that," the Reuters report quoted the spokeswoman as saying.
The ministry said the number of the members of the armed forces who had such operations was "no more than five" but declined to give an exact number.
"This is a tiny percentage out of over 200,000 members of the armed forces," said the spokeswoman.
Last week, the ministry acknowledged it had paid for breast enlargements for four female soldiers since the start of last year, saying they were not done on purely cosmetic grounds but for psychological reasons.
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