Russian MPs have put forward a bill that would ban gender-affirming surgeries or “sex change operations” in the country to the State Duma, lower house of parliament, one of the co-authors of the bill Pyotr Tolstoy announced.
The law would ban doctors from performing surgical procedures that help a transgender person match their gender identity and their physical appearance. The only exception is made for treatment of “congenital physiological anomalies”.
The document will also prohibit official gender marker changes for people who have not undergone a “sex change operation”.
Almost 400 MPs are listed as authors of the bill. According to Tolstoy, the biggest contribution to the document was made by the inter-factional group for the protection of Christian values and State Duma Chair Vyacheslav Volodin.
“Why are we doing this? We preserve Russia for our descendants, Russia with its cultural and family values and traditional norms, by blocking the Western anti-family ideology from infiltrating the country,” the lawmaker wrote.
In April, Russian Justice Minister Konstantin Chuychenko told TASS that the ministry was working on banning gender marker changes in ID documents for people who have not chosen to undergo “sex change operations”.
“A gender change letter issued by a medical organisation currently serves as grounds to correct official documents. However, surgical procedures are not necessary to obtain this letter,” Chuychenko noted. “Therefore, we see the following: a person who changed their gender in their passport while remaining the same person in the physical sense can marry and adopt children.”
Volodin later said that the parliament will begin “rapidly drafting” a bill to ban gender marker changes.
