The State Duma has prepared a draft law on a complete ban on gender reassignment

The State Duma prepared a bill on the complete ban of transgender transition. “Vedomosti” writes about this, having familiarized themselves with the draft law.

The draft law proposes to prohibit doctors from performing “medical interventions” to change a patient’s gender in case of mental illness and behavioral disorders. Now hormonal therapy and sex reassignment surgery are carried out in the presence of a psychiatrist’s certificate with a diagnosis of “transsexualism” – it is also required to change the gender marker in documents. The bill proposes not to take the diagnosis into account.

The Ministry of Health, which advocates “strict regulation in the field of gender reassignment”, notes that it is necessary to take into account situations related to “genetic deviations”. The State Duma says that the draft law takes this into account: at the commission meeting, medical evidence was discussed, in connection with which a person will still be able to obtain a permit for transgender transition.

“We have prepared such a bill that does not allow changing gender at the will of a person in the first place. And we have prepared a decision on the prohibition of gender change by medical methods,” says the author of the bill, Vladyslav Davankov, MP from “New People”. According to him, the document will be submitted to the State Duma in the near future – it is planned that all factions will.

Psychologists and specialized experts note that the bill actually prohibits transgender transition in Russia, violates human rights and may cause a spike in the number of suicides.

• In Russia, the dissemination of positive information about homosexuality, bisexuality and transgenderism is already prohibited. Fines of up to 400,000 rubles for citizens and up to five million rubles for organizations are provided for this.
• 83% of the surveyed LGBT+ representatives noticed an increase in homophobic and transphobic attitudes in Russian society after the start of the war with Ukraine. At the same time, LGBT people are less likely to turn to the police in case of discrimination and violence: they fear that they will face repeated discrimination.