By Yulia Volkova
Vladimir Putin signed a law prohibiting gender reassignment.
Now in Russia, gender-reassignment interventions, including the use of drugs, are prohibited. An exception will be the treatment of congenital anomalies. Representatives of the medical community criticized the project.
Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law according to which medical interventions aimed at gender reassignment are completely prohibited in Russia. The document is published on the portal of legal acts.
At the same time, sex reassignment will not include interventions related to the treatment of congenital anomalies or malformations, genetic and endocrine diseases. They will be permissible if the decision was made by the medical commission of one of the institutions subordinate to the Ministry of Health, it will also give an opinion on the compliance of sexual characteristics with a certain sex. This is necessary to make changes to the civil status records.
The law also suggests that state registration of sex reassignment without surgery is now prohibited. In the event of a sex change, one of the spouses dissolves their marriage, people who have made a transgender transition will not be able to adopt children and become guardians, such provisions appeared in the document for the second reading.
After the entry into force of the bill (July 24), all certificates of gender reassignment issued after the operation will be canceled, if these people have not yet had time to change their passports.
At the same time, experts criticized the bill, since “transsexualism” in the International Classification of Diseases in force in Russia is a mental disorder. Thus, “the ban on this kind of intervention – on sex reassignment, on hormone therapy – is a direct denial of medical care to a person,” explained Lyubov Vinogradova, executive director of the National Psychiatric Association of Russia.
Psychiatrist-sexologist Oleg Starostin also said that “the transition is a help in finding one’s own identity, this leads to a decrease in the risk of depression and suicide in these individuals.”
The bill banning gender reassignment was submitted to the State Duma at the end of May, co-authored by more than 360 deputies, headed by Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin and his deputies…
