According to the bill prepared by the speaker of the State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin, medical sex change will be prohibited in Russia, with the exception of cases when it comes to congenital anomalies. This is reported by Vedomosti, referring to the text of the document, which the publication was able to read.
The bill has not yet been put to the vote, but a Vedomosti source in the State Duma says that this could happen in the coming days. It will be submitted together with Volodin by the leaders of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, A Just Russia, the LDPR, as well as Sergei Neverov from United Russia.
According to the initiative of the speaker of the State Duma, the law "On the Fundamentals of Health Protection" should be supplemented with Article 45.1:
"Medical workers are prohibited from carrying out medical interventions aimed at changing the sex of a person, including the formation of a person's primary and (or) secondary sexual characteristics of the other sex."
If “physical anomalies of sex formation” are detected in patients, including in children, medical intervention will be possible “by decision of the medical commission of the federal state healthcare institution.” The list of such institutions will be approved by the government.
It is also proposed to remove from the law a clause that allows corrections or changes in the civil status record upon submission of a document on gender change issued by a medical organization.
An explanatory note is attached to the bill, which notes the "destructive activities" of a certain "sex change industry" aimed at young people. It allegedly includes "unscrupulous doctors, psychologists", as well as "a developed network of LGBT organizations and activists."
In addition, the authors of the document refer to the article of the Constitution, which establishes the norms for the preservation of family values and the protection of the institution of marriage, which provides for only two sexes and does not provide for changing them.
Lawyer Maxim Olenichev, who works with LGBT people, commented on Volodin’s initiative in a conversation with The Insider:
“For now, it is important to understand that the draft law has not been submitted to the State Duma, and the text of the one that will be eventually submitted may differ from the text available to the media editors.
But based on the analysis of the text published in Vedomosti, we can say that the state wants to ban transgender transition in Russia. This means that if the bill is passed, thousands of transgender people in Russia will not be able to change the gender marker in their documents. Often, changing documents at the registry office or obtaining a new passport with a different gender was considered, among other things, as social support.
A transgender person does not just change the gender in documents at will, he is also born in the body of a different gender. If, for example, a person was born in a male body, but feels like a girl, then in this case there is gender dysphoria that can lead to suicide or the inability to adapt to modern society. That is why the institution of transgender transition exists in all developed countries.
This bill has the only positive moment. The deputies envisaged another norm for intersex people, whom obstetricians determine the sex at birth only by looking at their primary sexual characteristics. However, as they grow older, they may also develop secondary ones that do not coincide with the primary male or female type. For such people, for the first time at the legislative level, it will be possible, by decision of the medical commission, to get the opportunity to change documents. Previously, this was not an option for intersex people.
In general, the state, by adopting this bill, discriminates against transgender people, trying to make them invisible. But this is impossible, because they are born and in any case they need the ability to change documents at their request. Its absence will lead to further growth of discrimination and stigmatization of transgender people in Russia and the restriction of their rights.
At the end of April, Russian Minister of Justice Konstantin Chuichenko said that, in his opinion, it is necessary to exclude the possibility of changing the sex in the passport for citizens who have not undergone the appropriate surgical intervention. Later, Kommersant wrote that a corresponding bill would be submitted to the State Duma in the near future.
In December 2022, Vladimir Putin signed into law a law completely banning the “propaganda” of non-traditional sexual relations and transgender transition. According to him, for the "propaganda" of LGBT people, pedophilia and gender reassignment among individuals of any age, a fine of 50,000 to 800,000 rubles can be imposed.