On May 30, a group of almost 400 deputies in the State Duma introduced a bill banning sex reassignment both medically and legally, that is, without surgery. Document published in the electronic database of the lower house of parliament. What does the initiative plan to change and why MPs have done it now – in Russian media material.
The bill amends two federal laws: “On civil status records” and “On the bases of the protection of the health of citizens”. The document prohibits doctors from performing a sex reassignment operation, including the formation of primary or secondary sexual characteristics of the opposite sex.
An exception is provided for operations “related to the treatment of congenital physiological abnormalities of sex formation in children”. Such interventions are allowed by decision of the medical commission of the federal state medical institution. The list of these organizations and the procedure for issuing decisions will be approved by the government. The bill also prohibits the modification of documents on the basis of a medical certificate confirming the change of sex.
“Why is this done? We preserve Russia for posterity – with its cultural and family values, its traditional foundations, erecting a barrier to the penetration of Western anti-family ideology”, – explain on his Telegram channel, one of the co-authors of the bill is State Duma Deputy Chairman Pyotr Tolstoy.
The document was sent for consideration to the Duma Committee on Health Protection. The date for the first reading of the bill has not yet been determined.
The fight against the “sex change industry”
The explanatory note to the document states that the practice of gender reassignment and information about this possibility is “growing” in Russia, as well as “the number of formal confirmations of gender reassignment is increasing.” The country has a “developed sex reassignment industry” that includes “unscrupulous doctors, psychologists,” LGBT organizations and activists, according to lawmakers. “They direct all of their destructive activities towards teenagers and young people,” the note reads.
Aiden Craver / Unsplash
MPs cited Interior Ministry statistics that from 2016 to 2022, 2,990 Russians filed applications to replace passports due to gender reassignment. These figures indicate that the maximum number of requests – 996 – occurred in 2022.
According to the current order of the Ministry of Health, a medical certificate and a confirmed diagnosis of “transsexualism” allow replacement of documents on the basis of a change of sex.
“Without any obstacles, you can get a certificate for transsexuality and sex reassignment in many private clinics across Russia, the cost of such a service can reach 30,000 rubles. According to the testimonies available from the parents of the children concerned, often the receipt of the certificates occurs without the appropriate complete medical examination, formally and within a few tens of minutes”, indicates the explanatory note.
Sex change and mobilization
Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Family, Women and Children, Nina Ostanina, linked the increase in demands for legal gender reassignment to the announced partial mobilization in Russia in September 2022.
“Today, for fear of being mobilized, people not only rushed to run abroad to the CIS countries. Those who stayed here not only thought, they rushed to medical organizations, easily changing gender and making changes to passports,” said Ostanin to the National News Service in April, calling the statistics “depressing.”
Mediazona*, after studying the statistics of the Ministry of the Interior for four years, found that a noticeable increase in the issuance of new passports due to gender reassignment began in March 2022, i.e. almost immediately after the start of the military operation in Ukraine. December last year was a record high, when 119 passports were issued to Russians on the basis of gender reassignment.
Alexander Reka / TASS
According to the publication, over the past four years, this trend has affected only six Russian regions: the Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Chukotka, the Altai Republic, Ingushetia, Karachay-Cherkessia and Chechnya. .
In a conversation with Mediazona*, human rights activists and trans people explained the increase in requests for modification of documents by the risk of “joining the army”, emigration and related bureaucratic problems , as well as the prospect of a ban on transgender transition.
How was the ban on sex reassignment discussed?
According to Pyotr Tolstoy, an inter-factional group for the protection of Christian values, State Duma Deputy Speakers Irina Yarovaya and Vladislav Davankov, as well as State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, greatly contributed to the development of a bill prohibiting sex reassignment. . In total, more than 360 deputies are listed as co-sponsors of the bill, including the leaders of all Duma factions – Vladimir Vasiliev (United Russia), Gennady Zyuganov (KPRF), Leonid Slutsky (LDPR) and Alexei Nechaev (New People).
On April 24, in an interview with TASS, Justice Minister Konstantin Chuichenko announced the preparation of amendments to the legislation that would exclude “the possibility of changing gender in the passport and other documents.” He cited the statistics of the registry office, according to which in 2018-2022 more than 2.7 thousand cases of sex change were registered according to documents, after which 190 marriages were concluded.
Chuichenko drew attention to the fact that after a sex change according to the documents, a person can remain physiologically the same, but at the same time get married and adopt children. State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said House Deputy Speaker Vladislav Davankov was tasked with preparing and submitting the bill as a matter of urgency.
On May 25, Deputy of the State Duma of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, Irina Filatova, announced that a bill would be submitted to the lower house to ban sex reassignment operations. Alexei Kurinny, deputy chairman of the Duma Committee on Health Protection, denied the existence of such initiatives in the State Duma in a conversation with Russian media.
The next day, May 26, Vedomosti reports that the State Duma has nevertheless prepared a bill totally prohibiting in Russia the change of sex to another at the request of a person.
Since December 2022, Russia has banned the “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations and gender reassignment” to people of all ages.
* registered by the Ministry of Justice of Russia in the register of foreign agents
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