What do we owe people in our prisons? Basic care is obviously a requirement — they need food, water, clothes, health care. Many prisons go above and beyond that, though. Prisoners can have cable, they can work out, get on the internet, have conjugal visits. But what about the worst of the worst in our society? What about people that rape and murder? Most people would say that we don’t owe them anything. They’re lucky to get away with just life in prison, and shouldn’t expect any handouts.

Not so in Massachusetts, where a convicted murderer is going to be able to get a sex change, because he just knows that he’s a woman, and therefore, Massachusetts taxpayers will be funding this man’s mutilation. Did you catch the fact that this man committed murder?

A federal appeals court on Friday upheld a judge’s ruling granting a taxpayer-funded sex change operation for a transgender inmate serving a life sentence for a murder conviction, saying receiving medically necessary treatment is a constitutional right that must be protected “even if that treatment strikes some as odd or unorthodox.”

U.S. District Judge Mark Wolf ruled in 2012 that the state Department of Correction must provide sex reassignment surgery for Michelle Kosilek, who was born as Robert Kosilek and is serving a life sentence for the killing of his wife in 1990.

Lawyers for the Department of Correction pointed out that Kosilek has already been receiving treatment for his “gender identity disorder”. This murderer has had hormone treatments, laser hair removal, and psychotherapy provided to him on the taxpayer dole to ease his “stress and anxiety”. They also pointed out that, being in an all-male prison, Kosilek’s safety may be an issue once he starts parading around as a female.

The court’s response? Oh well, not our problem.

U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals Judges O. Rogeriee Thompson and William Kayatta Jr. said in their ruling they were “assuredly mindful of the difficult tasks faced by prison officials every day.”

“But as the Supreme Court has cautioned, while sensitivity and deference to these tasks is warranted, `(c)ourts nevertheless must not shrink from their obligation to `enforce the constitutional rights of all `persons,’ including prisoners,”‘ the two judges wrote. “And receiving medically necessary treatment is one of those rights, even if that treatment strikes some as odd or unorthodox.”

That’s right. If you kill someone, you have the right to “medically necessary” surgery that you won’t even have to pay for! The surgery can cost over $50,000, and the state may end up paying for Kosilek’s legal fees too, totaling almost $1 million — all for a man who killed his wife.

So Kosilek is going to get a sex change, because he believes his true self is actually a woman. Well, I think my true self looks like, say… Angelina Jolie. Seriously. I truly believe that I am really a woman with big, pillowy lips, large, perky breasts, and the ability to fit into a size two despite having had three children. I feel it in my soul. So maybe if I go kill someone, I can have plastic surgery to turn myself into Angelina Jolie, too. Or is it just people who want to make themselves look like the opposite sex that get special goodies?

In the free world, with people who haven’t taken another person’s life, choosing to undergo a sex change is really not a big deal. You want to make yourself look like a woman when you’re actually a man, then fine. Knock yourself out. It’s your body, and people mutilate themselves in plenty of different ways already. But why is a murderer someone deserving of such “medical care”? Because he’s miserable and has tried to kill himself? Here’s a question: why should we care? Why should anyone give a damn that someone who took a life hates living? One might think that’s a positive, because once you’ve killed someone, you’ve given up any right to a happy life. You deserve to live in misery — or, in Kosilek’s case, “stress and anxiety” — until your sorry, miserable self dies.

Kosilek came from a troubled childhood, which will probably surprise absolutely no one, which included an alcoholic mother whose boyfriends beat him, and working as a child prostitute at the age of 12. After a life of drug abuse and alcoholism, he married a woman, Cheryl, who he eventually garroted to death. In prison, he’s advocated for other monsters to get sex changes and hormone therapy, like Sandy Jo Battista. Battista raped and murdered a ten-year-old girl.

These are the types of people that deserve unnecessary surgeries and treatments that will cost taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars? Because let’s be honest: this is not “medically necessary”. Kosilek and Battista will not die because they aren’t women. Their hearts will continue beating. Their brains will continue to function. They may not like the way they look, but who cares? What right do they have to expect anything? They’re lucky to have escaped the death penalty. But evidently, not only should they be allowed to live, their quality of life should be good. They can have their penises chopped off and fashioned to look like a vagina, even though it won’t change the fact that they’re men playing dress-up, all because they’re just too stressed and anxious.

I wonder the kind of stress and anxiety their victims felt as they were losing their lives at the hands of these men. Or does that just not matter anymore as soon as someone calls themselves transgender? Perhaps the justices should have thought about Cheryl Kosilek a little before they decided that Robert Kosilek deserved anything. If only they had.