Nineteen Democratic attorneys general said that the Department Veterans Affairs should cover costly genital surgeries for transgender-identifying veterans in part because that’s what former Republican President Abraham Lincoln would have wanted.
The Democrat officials, representing 18 states and Washington, D.C., filed an amicus brief on Wednesday in support of the Transgender American Veterans Association, which is suing the VA to cover the costs of vaginoplasty and phalloplasty surgeries.
“The mission of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is to fulfill President Abraham Lincoln’s simple promise: ‘to care for those who have served in our nation’s military and for their families, caregivers, and survivors,’” the attorneys general wrote in the amicus brief, which was first reported on by The Center Square. “Taken together, the regulation and implementing directive…
