All news

Bill submitted to Russia’s legislature seeks to ban gender reassignment surgery

The bill would also ban the government’s civil registration offices from altering people’s documents based on medical reports confirming gender reassignment surgery

MOSCOW, May 30. /TASS/. Lawmakers from all five factions of the State Duma have submitted a bill that would ban gender reassignment surgery, the Russian legislature’s Deputy Speaker Pyotr Tolstoy said on Tuesday.

According to the bill, a copy of which Tolstoy posted to his Telegram channel, the existing law On the Foundations of Citizens' Health Protection in the Russian Federation would be amended to include a provision to prohibit "medical interventions aimed at changing a person's gender," including the formation of primary or secondary sexual characteristics. However, the bill would allow the treatment of congenital anomalies of sex differentiation in children, but only if that gained approval from a medical panel at a federal health care institution. The bill would charge the Russian government with drawing up a list of such institutions and the procedure for making such decisions.

The bill would also ban the government’s civil registration offices from altering people’s documents based on medical reports confirming gender reassignment surgery. This ban would be an amendment to the existing law On Acts of Civil Status, which would rescind its current provision allowing to make such changes.