Chelsea Manning To Undergo Hormone Therapy

Chelsea Manning, the former intelligence analyst convicted in the WikiLeaks scandal, will undergo hormone treatment for gender reassignment.

The therapy would enable the Army private formerly known as Bradley Manning to make the transition to a woman.

Manning changed her legal name in April 2014.

The hormone therapy was approved this month by Colonel Erica Nelson, commandant of the Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where Manning is serving a 35-year sentence.

The decision, first reported by USA Today, came after a lawsuit claimed that Manning was at a high risk of self-castration and suicide unless she received more focused treatment for gender dysphoria, the sense of being a woman in a man's body.

The lawsuit was filed in September.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons and many state and local corrections agencies administer hormone therapy to prisoners with gender dysphoria, but Manning is the first transgender military prisoner to request such treatment.

Manning, 26, was convicted in August 2013 of espionage and other offences for sending more than 700,000 classified documents to WikiLeaks while working in Iraq.