Yesterday the State Duma pushed for consideration a bill banning gender transition. Now the document “On Amendments to the Federal Law “On Acts of Civil Status” and the Federal Law “On the Basics of Protecting the Health of Citizens in Russian Federation” has been officially registered. The proposed deadline for submitting feedback on bill is June 14th.
If initially it was only about the impossibility of changing the marker in documents (“civilian gender”) without medical intervention, then now the correction procedure itself is utterly questionable. The deputies propose to consider “treatment of congenital physiological anomalies” as an exception, but, as you may know, intersex persons are not required to get rid of their inherent features surgically.
Thus, the new Article 45.1 “Prohibition of changing the sex of a person” into the Federal Law is near at hand, according to which:
1. Medical interventions aimed at changing the sex of a person, including the formation of primary and/or secondary signs of the other sex, are prohibited.
2. Interventions related to the treatment of congenital anomalies of sex formation in children are allowed, by decision of a special medical commission.
However, the Ministry of Health, as one of profile committees, has not yet expressed its position. Earlier we mentioned that medical officials, unlike the Ministry of Justice, do not rush to support the initiative, as it will destroy the built-in system of medical care in country.
In an explanatory note, the lawmakers called such a system “an industry of gender reassignment, including unscrupulous doctors, psychologists, a developed network of LGBT organizations and activists who direct their destructive activity towards teenagers and young people”. The parliamentarians also referred to the Constitution, where allegedly “only two sexes are legitimate and there are no “intermediate” and “additional” options for sexes or “genders”.
Ekaterina Dikovskaya, Head of Legal Assistance and Strategic Litigation Program in Sphere Foundation:
— We see another cannibalistic law that violates basic human rights, including the right of citizens for qualified medical care. This bill puts the entire medical community at risk: doctors will be forced to choose between the obligation to provide care for the patient and the fear of being accused of “LGBT propaganda”.
The Sphere Foundation team encourages queer people and their allies to sign a petition in defense of the rights for the Russian trans community and, if possible, to support organizations that help transgender people right now: Kilkot 18+, Center T, SNeG and others.
