Green light to the ‘trans law’: allowing sex change without medical report

The ruling prohibits conversion, aversion or counterconditioning therapies and consolidates LGTBI rights

The Council of Ministers has given the green light this Monday, the eve of the International LGTBI Pride Day, to the bill for the real and effective equality of trans people and to guarantee the rights of LGTBI people, which aims to depathologize trans people by eliminating the requirement of a medical report so that they can legally change their name in the Civil Registry.

“It is a very important law that continues with the task and work that this country undertook in 2005 with President Zapatero’s same-sex marriage law,” explained the Executive’s spokeswoman, Isabel Rodríguez.

With the new normative, people who want to register a change of name and sex must go through a double appearance process. In the first, they will fill in a form in which they express their disagreement with the assigned sex and the request for change. After this, they will then receive information on the legal consequences that this change will have, requesting rectification.

In the second, which must be within a period not exceeding three months, the applicant will ratify their request and the persistence of their decision to change their sex. Within a month after that second appearance, the Civil Registry will issue a resolution.

Access to human reproduction techniques

In addition to this measure, the bill allows lesbian, bisexual and single women to once again have access to human reproduction techniques and the Government undertakes to draft a Ministerial Order within 6 months to extend this right to trans people with the ability to gestate.

Conversion, aversion or counterconditioning therapies aimed at modifying the orientation, sexual identity or gender expression of people are prohibited, regardless of whether they have given their consent. This consolidates rights for trans and LGTBI people in the educational and labor spheres; and guarantees that health care for trans people is carried out in accordance with the principles of non-pathologisation, autonomy, co-decision and informed consent.

This text, which is now in its processing phase in Congress, also provides for the inclusion in educational curricula of knowledge and respect for sexual, gender and family diversity as an objective at all stages, as well as training in the matter for all teachers, among other measures.

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