Russian bill banning ‘sex change’ altered to prohibit child adoption for trans persons

The health protection committee of the Russian lower house has reviewed the bill banning “sex change” and supported introducing two amendments to it, parliamentary channel Duma TV reported on Tuesday.

The bill seeks to ban gender reassignment surgery and hormonal treatment except in cases of “congenital physiological deviations”. It will also prohibit changes to official documents on the basis of medical “sex change” certificates.

The proposed amendments will allow to annul marriages in cases when one or both spouses undergoes a “sex change”.

“Those marriages that were registered by a man and a woman, one of whom then ended up of a different sex, will be annulled,” deputy chair of the committee Sergey Leonov told TASS.

The amendment will be retroactive, rendering invalid those marriages where one or both spouses had transitioned before the law’s introduction.

“Now nobody will be allowed to get a [sex] change, so such people won’t exist”, Leonov explained.

A further amendment will prohibit couples, where one of the partners has undergone a “sex change”, from adopting children. Moreover, persons who have undergone a transition abroad will be unable to receive Russian documents listing the correct gender identity.

In June, Russian lawmakers voted unanimously to adopt the bill in the first reading. Nearly 400 MPs are listed as the bill’s authors.

“Why are we doing this? By hindering Western anti-family ideology, we are saving Russia for future generations — with its family and cultural values and traditions,” said Pyotr Tolstoy, one of the bill’s authors.