August 2, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — President Trump could save American taxpayers nearly $2 billion if he follows through on his plan to ban military service for severely gender-confused ("transgender") individuals.

That is the estimate for the cost of the "transgender" military policy begun under Obama and slated to go forward until Trump tweeted his plans to end the policy July 26, according to a July report produced by the conservative D.C. think tank Family Research Council (FRC) before Trump’s surprise announcement.

"Adding all of these costs — for both existing ["transgender"] service members and those who will join the military in the next 10 years, and for both direct medical costs and the cost of lost time due to ["sex reassignment"] surgery — yields a total estimated cost for the new transgender policy of nearly $2 billion ($1.88 billion) over 10 years," says the paper by FRC Senior Fellow for Policy Studies Peter Sprigg.

That estimate does not factor in inflation, Sprigg notes.

To estimate the taxpayer cost of military-funded transsexual “sex reassignment surgeries,” FRC relied on the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, a project of the leading pro-“trans” organization, National Center for Transgender Equality. The survey found that “82 percent of biological males who identify as female and 64 percent of biological females who identify as male” desire to have “surgical intervention” to live out their “gender identity” as the opposite sex, the FRC report states.

To calculate the cost of such surgery, FRC used a price list from the Philadelphia Center for Transgender Surgery and found that “a comprehensive package of male-to-female surgical procedures would cost $110,450, and female-to-male procedures would cost $89,050.” (A footnote reveals that CNN put the costs higher: “$140,450 to transition from male to female, and $124,400 to transition from female to male.”)

The FRC report relies on what some are saying is an overestimate of “transgender” numbers by the pro-LGBT Williams Institute, which estimates “that there are currently 7,300 biological males and 1,500 biological females with gender dysphoria serving on active duty in the military.” The New York Times, citing a Rand Corporation study last year, reported July 26 that only 2,450 of the 1.3 million activity-duty members of the military are “transgender.” LGBT activists like Bruce “Caitlyn” Jenner and Human Rights Campaign president Chad Griffin have used a much higher number of 15,000 “transgender” service members to exaggerate the impact of Trump’s action.

Based on the Williams Institute numbers, Sprigg writes, “Multiplying these figures results in an estimate that the military would pay $746.6 million for surgery alone for active duty service members” over 10 years.

Other 'transgender' costs

But there are more costs beyond the body-disfiguring surgeries — which include amputating a woman’s healthy breasts to create a flat chest like a man, or destroying and splicing a man’s penis to turn it inside-out into a makeshift “vagina.” Among them are counseling (as high as $5,000) and cross-sex “hormone therapy in the year before surgery” ($2,400), bringing the total expense to more than $800 million, according to the FRC report.

Then there is the cost to the military of time lost “by service members who are temporarily disabled or unable to be deployed due to preparation for, or recovery from, surgery and/or hormone treatments.” FRC puts that at $504.3 million.

Magnet of 'free medical care'?

Moreover, if the Obama “transgender” policy were to become permanent, the prospect of “free medical care,” including the “reassignment surgeries, “may act as a magnet drawing even more people who identify as transgender to enlist,” Sprigg writes. He calculates the medical cost for prospective “transgender” recruits “will total $276 million over 10 years, and the cost of lost time for those recruits will be $416 million.”

Although LGBT activists have extolled the patriotism of gender-confused individuals who are currently serving in military or want to, conservatives like Rep. Vicky Hartzler, R-Missouri, have focused on the high cost of medical “transition” procedures as an expensive, unnecessary distraction for the Armed Forces.

Trump’s tweets announcing his proposed “transgender” ban said in part, “Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail."

Walt Heyer, one former “male-to-female” transsexual, praised Trump’s decision to end “transgender service,” a policy launched without congressional action late in Obama’s second term. Heyer, creator of SexChangeRegret.com, told LifeSiteNews that Trump’s new policy would prevent “turning the military into a giant, tax-funded, sex-change clinic.”