The average transgender soldier will spend 238 days recovering from sex change surgeries and unavailable to deploy, according to an Obama administration study.
The Trump administration's transgender ban places deployability as a determining factor into whether to admit transgender individuals into the military. The White House outlined guidelines to implement the ban within six months in a memo to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
The ability to be deployed to war zones or bases around the world is an issue for transgender soldiers who undergo taxpayer-funded sex change operations, according to a study by the RAND Corporation.
The 2016 study was commissioned by the Obama administration, which favored opening the ranks to transgender individuals, and funded by the office of former secretary of defense Ash Carter.
The study found that, on average, transgender troops seeking basic sex-change operations would be nondeployable for 238 days, or 34 weeks out of a year. The figure amounts to 65 percent of one year.
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