Massachusetts Judge OK’s Taxpayer-Funded Inmate Sex-Change

A judge in Boston has ordered state officials to provide a taxpayer-funded sex-change operation for a transsexual inmate.

The judge ruled such an operation for Michelle Kosilek is the only quote "adequate care" for his gender identity disorder.

Kosilek has been serving life without parole since 1993 for strangling his wife Cheryl in Mansfield and then dumping her body at an area mall.

Kosilek has been living as a woman in an all-male prison in Norfolk, and sued the Department of Correction in 2000 saying that the state's refusal to pay for a sex-change operation was cruel and unusual punishment.

State officials have not said as of yet whether they plan to appeal today's ruling.