House rejects attempt to ban transgender surgery for troops
The Republican-led House narrowly rejected a measure on Thursday that sought to strike an Obama-era practice of requiring the Pentagon to pay for gender transition surgeries and hormone therapy.
Democrats described the proposal as bigoted, unconstitutional and cowardly and they won support from 24 GOP lawmakers to scuttle the amendment to the annual defense policy bill, 214-209.
The amendment crafted by Rep. Vicky Hartzler, R-Mo., would have forbid money from being spent by the military’s health care system for medical treatment related to gender transition. Hartzler portrayed her proposal as a good government plan aimed at assuring military dollars are spent only on critical national defense needs.
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The close vote nonetheless underscored the zeal with which a number of Republicans are seizing opportunities to reverse what they cast as President Barack Obama’s social engineering of the armed forces. Transgender service members have been able to serve openly in the military since last year, when former Defense Secretary Ash Carter ended the ban.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/congress/house-to-consider-banning-transgender-surgery-for-troops/2017/07/13/f81663ca-67ef-11e7-94ab-5b1f0ff459df_story.html?utm_term=.25fe3b2ff620