Obama Pardon Update 2017: What's Next For Chelsea Manning? Trans Woman Won't Receive Gender Surgery Under Military Insurance

President Barack Obama's decision to commute former Army Private Chelsea Elizabeth Manning's prison sentence lifted the unprecedented responsibility for treating the transgender woman's gender dysphoria from the Defense Department’s shoulders, the New York Times reported. Manning was among the 209 prison inmates to whom Obama granted clemency Tuesday.

Manning—who was responsible for the largest leak of U.S. military information in history and, in part, for WikiLeaks’ rise to notoriety—was expected to walk out of the Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, military prison May 17. She ended a hunger strike at the men’s prison in September when the military agreed to fulfill her request for gender dysphoria treatment, which would have begun with a psychologist-recommended gender reassignment surgery, BuzzFeed first reported. In February 2015, the military agreed to provide hormone therapy for Manning, after she sued for the access to such treatment. Manning had twice attempted suicide while incarcerated and, as she told Cosmopolitan in April 2015, had harbored a desire to live as a woman for as long as she could remember. Born as a man, she previously went by the name Bradley.

James Esseks, the director of the LGBT & HIV Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, which sued the military on Manning’s behalf in 2014 over its denial of her “access to hormone therapy and to the clothing and grooming standards that all other female military prisoners are subject to,” expected her to start living a mentally healthier life out of prison, despite the desired surgery’s possible delay.

“President Obama’s action today most likely saved Chelsea’s life,” Esseks wrote on the ACLU website Tuesday. “Allowing Chelsea to start living her life as her genuine self, after having served a quite serious sentence, shows that President Obama understands the meaning of clemency.” (According to the Times, Manning’s 35-year sentence was in fact relatively severe compared to the one- to three-year sentences for the several leakers to ever have been convicted.)

Esseks’ colleague Chase Strangio, an attorney who works with the ACLU’s LGBT Project and represented Manning, told the advocacy group he saw a future of activism and an overall better quality of life for Manning.

“This move could quite literally save Chelsea’s life,” he told the ACLU, “and we are all better off knowing that Chelsea Manning will walk out of prison a free woman, dedicated to making the world a better place and fighting for justice for so many.”

The ACLU was unable to respond to inquiries from International Business Times by press time.

It remained unclear whether Manning would return to her hometown of Crescent, Oklahoma, or to Haverfordwest, in Wales, where she went to live with her mother as a teenager, during her parents' divorce. Her Welsh family said they were "overjoyed" upon the news of her commutation and that there would "always be a welcome for her in Wales," the BBC reported. Manning's Uncle, Kevin Fox, told the BBC he was "over the moon" and surprised by how quickly the ordeal was over. The British broadcaster made no mention of whether Fox had any ideas for Manning's resettlement plans.