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TS Seeks Public Funds for SRS

By Associated Press
Contributed by Elizabeth Parker
PORTLAND, OR
April 9, 1998

Her long legs crossed, Olivia Jaquay settles into a chair at a downtown coffeehouse, drawing an interested glance from a man in a business suit at the next table.

Brushing her hair back with fuchsia-colored fingernails, she talks of her love of vintage clothing, a penchant for rubies and her pending nuptials to a man with whom she'd love to have a child.

At 42, she says she finally feels like a woman in every sense of the word. Except one.

Jaquay must have one last reconstructive surgery to make the transformation from male to female -- and she wants taxpayers to pay for it under the state's health insurance plan.

She contends she suffers from a gender identity disorder, and without the surgery would be left in a frustrating netherworld between the sexes.

"I do not want to live in purgatory any more," Jaquay said.

She soon plans to testify before a state panel that will help decide whether sex-change operations should be covered by the Oregon Health Plan.

Transsexualism is 688 on the state's list of 745 ailments and treatments. Only the top 574 are available to the 270,000 low-income residents enrolled in the plan.

Oregon, which in February became the first state to approve coverage for assisted suicide, would not be the first to fund sex changes. Minnesota has covered such surgeries since 1977, though lawmakers are considering a bill to put a stop to it.

The issue has polarized the medical community, which is split on whether sex-change surgery is elective or corrective.

"It's a complex issue," said Dr. Kathleen Weaver, medical director of the Oregon Health Plan Policy and Research. "This is a real thing for these people. But there is also some concern that doing the surgery is not going to correct anything."

Weaver also fears another issue: if the operations are funded by the state plan, that might entice patients outside Oregon to move here for coverage. She points out that Portland plastic surgeon Toby Meltzer annually performs 150 sex reassignment operations, which start at $10,000. All but a few of his patients come from out of state.

"That's $1.5 million -- a big piece of our budget," Weaver said.

The surgery is not a cure-all. Some studies have show high rates of depression and suicide following sex changes.

Jaquay said it saved her life. She had attempted to kill herself several times.

She had gone through years of hormone therapy paid for by her health maintenance organization, which contracts with the state health plan. But it stopped paying when officials realized she was leading up to a sex-change operation.

So last October, Jaquay hocked her Chevrolet Monte Carlo, sold some jewelry and had a sex change anyway.

The decision was not made lightly. She'd been struggling with her sexual identity from the time she was a little boy named Oliver, saying a prayer each night that he would wake up without a penis.

As a teen-ager, Oliver got kicked out of school and joined the Army in 1973. He spent four years there hoping his desire to be a woman was just a phase. It wasn't.

"Everything came naturally as a girl," Jaquay said. "I always went into the women's restroom. I was trying to be something my mom wanted, but I just wanted to wear her clothes."

Jaquay was diagnosed with gender identity disorder, a condition recognized by the American Psychiatric Association in which a person feels trapped in the body of the wrong sex.

The disorder, which some say lies in the physical structure of the brain, is incurable. Treatment includes hormones, therapy and surgery.

Before she had her surgery in the 1970s, Margaret Deirdre O'Hartigan was an effeminate boy who liked wearing makeup, had no interest in girls and tried to castrate himself. He was institutionalized.

"This is a disability," said O'Hartigan, who three years ago founded a nonprofit organization to obtain medical and legal assistance for transsexuals. "When it's proven to be medically necessary, it's an obscenity that it's not provided."

Jaquay said the ordeal is putting a strain in her relationship. Her plan to go back to school for a degree in computers is on hold and all the publicity is making it tough to find a job.

"We are not what you see on `Jerry Springer,'" Jaquay said. "We are down-to-earth human beings."



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