Since 2017, the Washington Free Beacon reports, California has spent more than $4 million on surgical sex changes and cosmetic “gender-affirming” enhancements for 157 inmates, including four on death row. There’s a back story here taxpayers across the nation should know.
California taxpayers have funded fake breasts, laser hair removal, facial feminization, and vaginoplasties.
In February of 1980 in Los Angeles, Rodney Quine and an accomplice gunned down Shahid Ali Baig, a father of three, then stole Baig’s car and $80. Quine drew a life sentence for murder, kidnapping, and robbery but quickly began to game the system. (READ MORE from Lloyd Billingsley: Senate Confirmation Not Required)
Twice married and the father of two daughters, Quine claimed to have sought female status since the age of nine. When denied the female overhaul, Quine reportedly attempted suicide and failed. The convict gained hope in 2015, when California became the first state to pony up taxpayer money for the sex-change operations of convicted violent criminals.
According to an August, 2015 LifeSiteNews report, federal judge Jon Tigar, an Obama appointee, “assigned himself to Quine’s case and appointed a team of San Francisco lawyers and the Transgender Law Center to represent him.” Tigar’s view was that denying a prisoner’s sex-change operation may constitute “deliberate indifference” to a serious medical need and, if so, would be unconstitutionally “cruel and unusual punishment.”
In 2015 California agreed to pay, and on January 5, 2017 Shiloh Heavenly Quine duly got the state-funded “reassignment,” which transgender activists construe as a right. Previously confined at the Mule Creek State Prison for men, the convicted murderer is now inmate WB1121 at the Central California Women’s Facility. His case seems at odds with science and legal precedent.
When a defendant claims to be innocent, they are not automatically discharged. A trial subjects the defendant to questioning, the testimony of witnesses, and hard scientific evidence. Quine’s claim that he always wanted to be a woman seems to have escaped that process, and the possibility of perjury overlooked. After all, criminals have been known to lie.
When criminals are duly sentenced in a court of law they lose certain rights such as freedom of movement and association. Anything that puts mandates and costs on other people is not a right. Quine’s surgery was an elective procedure taxpayers were forced to fund, and that now carries on with other criminals to the tune of $4 million.
California taxpayers have funded fake breasts, laser hair removal, facial feminization, and vaginoplasties. Attorney Harmeet Dhillon told the Free Beacon such procedures are “experimental at best and scientifically unjustified at worst.” Should that be doubted, consider these official descriptions of the procedures that Joe Biden’s Assistant Secretary for Health, Dr. Rachel Levine, considers medically necessary, safe, and effective.
According to the Oregon Health and Science University, the risks to vaginoplasty include vaginal stenosis, narrowing of the vaginal canal, and “a second surgery is often required to fix it.” There is also a chance of fistula, a rare connection between body parts such as the vagina and rectum.
“If you see fecal matter (poop) coming from the vagina,” the Oregon Health and Science University explains, “you may have a fistula and should tell us right away.” That would require corrective surgery, but California convicts have confidence that, whatever the cost, taxpayers will pick up the tab. It wasn’t always that way in the Golden State.
Back in 1978, Californians scaled back state power through Proposition 13, the People’s Initiative to Limit Property Taxation. In 1996, Californians eliminated racist college admissions through Proposition 209, the California Civil Rights Initiative. Those measures inspired liberty-minded citizens across the country, but things are different now. (READ MORE: It’s Time to Cancel Pride Month)
Government funded sex-change surgery is an affront to taxpayers but surely inspires convicts to demand more. Woke politicians and judges are eager to comply. Reality dysphoria is a national problem, and the soaring costs may be coming to a state near you.
Lloyd Billingsley is a policy fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland, California.
