Chelsea Manning, the soldier convicted of forwarding sensitive national-security information to the whistleblower organization WikiLeaks, has been approved for hormone therapy to continue her transition to a woman.

USA Today reported Manning is currently serving a 35-year prison sentence at the Army's Fort Leavenworth prison, where she remains a soldier as well as an inmate. The 27-year-old will be eligible for parole in about seven years.

The U.S. Army's approval of hormone therapy, revealed in a memo the newspaper said it obtained on Thursday, marks a first for the U.S. military.

Transgender people are precluded from serving in the country's armed forces, but Manning cannot be discharged while serving her prison sentence.

"After carefully considering the recommendation that (the treatment) is medically appropriate and necessary, and weighing all associated safety and security risks presented, I approve adding (hormone treatment) to Inmate Manning's treatment plan," Col. Erica Nelson, the commandant of the Fort Leavenworth Disciplinary Barracks in Kansas, wrote in the document.

Defense Department officials told The Associated Press that Nelson signed off on the therapy on Feb. 5.

The decision followed a lawsuit filed in September in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, in which Manning demanded more focused treatment for gender dysphoria, the sense of being a woman in a man's body. The soldier was at a high risk of self-castration and suicide, her lawyers argued, because the treatment the Army was providing was insufficient. Although Manning had been receiving psychotherapy, the mental health specialist assigned to him lacked the qualifications to treat gender dysphoria, the suit alleged.

An American Civil Liberties Union attorney who represented Manning in her lawsuit, Chase Strangio, said the military's groundbreaking approval of her hormone therapy marked an important first step.

"But the delay in treatment came with a significant cost to Chelsea and her mental health, and we are hopeful that the government continues to meet Chelsea's medical needs as is its obligation under the Constitution so that those harms may be mitigated," Strangio cautioned.

The soldier, born Bradley Edward Manning, was convicted in August 2013 of espionage and other charges for forwarding more than 700,000 during his time as an Army intelligence analyst.

Related