http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-inmate-sex-reassignment-20170106-story.html
California was legally required to pay for the operation, corrections spokeswoman Terry Thornton said.
"The 8th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution requires that prisons provide inmates with medically necessary treatment for medical and mental health conditions including inmates diagnosed with gender dysphoria," Thornton said in a written statement.
California corrections officials had fought in court for years to avoid paying for sex-reassignment surgeries. In one high-profile case, the state paroled Michelle-Lael Norsworthy in 2015, just one day before a federal appeals court was to hear her request for state-funded surgery.
Quine told a prison psychologist who recommended her for the operation that it would bring a "drastic, internal completeness."
She expects it will end a dysfunction and depression so deep that she tried to cut and hang herself in prison five times, most recently in 2014 when she initially was told she could not have the operation.
Quine said she tried unsuccessfully to amputate her genitalia when she was about 19, three years before she went to prison and roughly the same time she tried self-medicating with illegally purchased female hormones.
Joyce Hayhoe, a spokeswoman for the federal court-appointed official who controls California's prison medical care, said the cost of sex-reassignment surgeries could approach $100,000, including procedures and medications before and after the operation.
