Doctors in Indiana are refusing to perform “gender‐affirming surgery” on a dangerous prison inmate who was jailed for murdering a baby.
The inmate, Jonathan C. Richardson, is a white male who claims to be a “Muslim transgender woman.”
Richardson, who now goes by the name “Autumn Cordellionè,” is serving a 55-year prison sentence for killing his infant stepdaughter.
Last September, a federal judge ordered the Indiana Department of Correction to provide “gender‐affirming surgery” to Richardson after he claimed to be “female” and demanded to be housed in a women’s prison.
However, no doctor in Indiana is willing to conduct such a surgery.
Parties to the lawsuit revealed the pushback from doctors in a status report on Wednesday.
According to the status report, the Indiana Department of Corrections (DOC) referred Richardson to IU Health’s Dr. Joshua Roth.
However, Dr. Roth declined to move forward with the procedure.
Last month, Roth revealed that the Indiana DOC had been pressuring him to conduct the surgery.
The pressure came despite psychologist Dr. Kelsey Beers filing a report recommending against it.
According to the report, Dr. Roth was the last possible option in Indiana after every other doctor had refused to perform the surgery.
Wednesday’s joint status report said that the DOC had also reached out to two other surgeons who were known to provide sexual reassignment surgeries in the past.
Those doctors were Dr. Michelle Jones Singer and Dr. Ashley Robey.
Singer and Robey both said they no longer perform those types of surgeries on prisoners.
Richardson’s attorney, Kenneth Falk, also provided DOC with a reference to Dr. Jonathan Witten.
Witten, a surgeon who practices in Kentucky and Indiana, also said he no longer conducts sex changes for inmates.
“Despite DOC’s diligent efforts to refer the Plaintiff to Dr. Roth and identify another surgeon with the state, it has been unable to identify a surgeon in Indiana who is willing to perform a sex change surgery on a prisoner,” the status report said.
The Indiana DOC said it even contacted 21 other states that it has interstate compacts with, to see if they would be able to facilitate Richardson’s gender-reassignment surgery.
Those states are Alabama, Alaska, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Virginia, and Wyoming.
15 of the states refused to even consider the matter, according to the status report.
The remaining six—Alabama, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Oklahoma—said they would need to review the case further before deciding.
However, the DOC opposes being forced to send Richardson out of the state for a sex change.
The status report noted:
“The Court lacks jurisdiction to alter a preliminary injunction currently on appeal, and the Plaintiff has not cited any authority supporting a finding that the Eighth Amendment requires DOC to transfer a prisoner out of state for the purpose of a sex change.”
It’s now likely that Richardson’s sex change plan will be dead in the water since President Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
Trump signed an executive order to cease federally funded sex changes for prisoners.
And even though Richardson’s lawsuit is against a state institution that isn’t subject to Trump’s order, the Indiana DOC successfully motioned on Jan. 29 to have Richardson undergo a mental health evaluation.
The DOC said in its motion that such an evaluation is necessary because Richardson’s gender dysphoria diagnosis is questionable.
The report noted his “history of lying to and manipulating doctors.”
District Judge Richard L Young granted the DOC’s motion on Tuesday.
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