Spain passes ‘trans law’ allowing sex change from 12 years old

Spain’s “trans law”, which allows sex to be changed on vital records without medical certificates, was finally approved by the Spanish Parliament this Thursday.

The “Law for the real and effective equality of transgender people” allows you to change the sex in the civil registry in Spain from the age of 12 without a doctor’s opinion.

Judge’s permission will be required for cases between the ages of 12 and 14 and from parents or legal guardians between the ages of 14 and 16, but for those over 16, the will of someone who wants to change gender will suffice.

In all cases, medical advice and confirmation of any hormonal treatment is no longer needed to remove the burden of pathology from gender reassignment.

“Trans people [transexuais] they are who they are” without having to “ask anyone for permission or an apology”, and the state should recognize their rights, Equality Minister Irene Montero said at the end of the parliamentary debate.

The new law took more than a year to approve, and along the way, it split the Socialist Party (PSOE), which rules Spain, into a coalition with the far-left platform Unidas Podemos, of which Irene Montero is a member.

The law has been opposed by feminist associations who, like the critical wing of the PSOE, believe it could undermine the gains made by women in the fight for equal rights.

For these movements, being a woman is not a subjective identity, but feminism is a struggle against discrimination against an objective identity based on a biological field.

Among the criticisms resurrected this Thursday in the voices of MPs from the People’s Party (NP, right) and Citizens (Liberals), there are also warnings about the lack of “legal protection” of the new legislation, as happened in other countries such as Scotland. which currently repeal or block similar laws.

We are talking about, for example, the case of a man convicted of two rapes of women in Scotland, considered this Thursday in the Spanish Parliament, who changed his sex and thus had the right to serve his sentence in women’s prison wards.

But there is also, these critical voices say, an opportunity that opens up opportunities for men to compete in sports alongside women or represent themselves in competitions that require physical evidence for selection and have different standards set for male and female candidates.

The warnings also include questions about the application of gender-based violence laws or quotas in electoral laws.

Minister Irene Montero returned this Thursday to address “trans women are women, period” and spoke of “transphobia” in the debate.

The deputies of the various parliamentary groups who this Thursday defended the law in Parliament insisted that it was about the recognition and expansion of rights in Spain and non-discrimination of a group of stigmatized people through a law that does not separate and does not divide made “against anyone “.

This Thursday, PP and Citizens emphasized that they are in favor of a law that recognizes and protects the rights of transgender people, but believe that there has not been a sufficiently calm and lengthy legislative process in the Spanish Parliament to allow all the necessary debates and hearings, and, therefore, in there is no “legal certainty” in the law.

The PP group even appealed to the benches of the ruling parties to withdraw the initiative and avoid a final vote so that a “good law” could be passed.

The far right of the VOX party also opposed the new law, believing it to be associated with “nonsense” and “propaganda of homosexuality and transsexuality” at a time when Spain is seeing “an alarming increase in homosexuality and transsexuality”, defending that the state should promote” reconciliation of people with their bodies”, and not “irreversible mutilation” through hormonal treatments and operations.

Minister Irene Montero responded that the law “sharply separates” gender identity recognition from treatment, and denounced VOX’s “lies and rumors” that foment “hate speech” against groups of people they consider abnormal or sick, homosexuals and transgender people. .

A law passed this Thursday bans genital modification surgery under the age of 12 on children born with physical characteristics of both sexes (intersex or hermaphrodite children).

On the other hand, it enshrines the right of lesbian, bisexual and transgender women of reproductive capacity to access medically assisted reproduction techniques and allows relatedness of children of lesbian and bisexual mothers without the need for marriage.