Volodin drafted a bill to ban gender reassignment

State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin has prepared a bill prohibiting sex change in Russia, except in cases of congenital anomalies. Vedomosti got acquainted with the text of the document. The project has not yet been submitted to the lower house of parliament. According to a source in the State Duma, this can happen today. Vedomosti sent a request to Volodin’s representative.

Volodin, as well as faction leaders Gennady Zyuganov (KPRF), Sergei Mironov (Fair Russia, Leonid Slutsky (LDPR), Sergei Neverov (United Russia), deputy speaker of the chamber Anna Kuznetsova and other deputies, will submit the bill to the State Duma, stated in the text of the document.

The Law “On Fundamentals of Health Protection” can be supplemented with a separate article 45.1: “Medical workers are prohibited from carrying out medical interventions aimed at changing the sex of a person, including the formation of primary and (or) secondary sexual characteristics of the other sex in a person.” In addition, in this article a separate paragraph is devoted to the mechanism of action in the presence of congenital anomalies in a person. In particular: “Medical interventions related to the treatment of congenital physiological anomalies of sex formation in children are allowed by decision of the medical commission of the federal state healthcare institution.”

The list of such organizations and the procedure for issuing such decisions, according to the text of the bill, will be approved by the government.

The prepared bill also introduces amendments to the law “On acts of civil status”. It is proposed to recognize as invalid Part 4 of Art. 70. Now it allows the conclusion on making corrections or changes in the record of the act of civil status is drawn up by the registry office in the event that a document on the change of sex issued by a medical organization is submitted.

The explanatory note to the bill states that Russia already has a “developed sex reassignment industry, including unscrupulous doctors, psychologists, and a developed network of LGBT organizations and activists.” Its “destructive” activities are directed, in particular, to teenagers and young people.

The authors of the document pointed out that the Constitution of the Russian Federation contains norms on the preservation of traditional family values ​​and the protection of the institution of marriage as a union of a man and a woman, and also provides for only two sexes – men and women. “There are no “intermediate” and “additional” variants of sexes or “genders”, categories like “parent #1” and “parent #2” are not provided, as well as the possibility of “sex change” is not provided,” the draft law emphasizes. In addition, the legislators recalled the responsibility for promoting non-traditional sexual relations and promoting gender reassignment.

The practice of gender reassignment and informing citizens about such a possibility in Russia, according to the authors of the document, is “only gaining momentum”, and in parallel with this, the number of formal confirmation of gender reassignment is growing. According to the statistics of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which is also given in the explanatory note, in 2016-2022. 2990 people applied for the replacement of passports on the basis of “sex change”. A certificate of gender reassignment is available in many private clinics, the cost of such a service is up to 30,000 rubles.

In the previous version of the bill, which Vedomosti got acquainted with, the deputies also thought about a ban on changing sex at the request of a person. If the amendments are adopted, citizens would not be able to change gender through medical procedures, as well as make appropriate amendments to their passports and other documents.

The procedure for dealing with congenital anomalies was not clearly defined. It was proposed to supplement the Law “On the Fundamentals of Health Protection” with a separate article 45.1: “Medical workers are prohibited from conducting medical interventions aimed at changing the gender of a patient associated with mental illness and behavioral disorders.” In addition, paragraph 4 of Art. 70 of the law “On acts of civil status” was proposed to be supplemented with the words “except for the cases specified in article 45.1 of the federal law “On the basics of protecting the health of citizens.”

The Ministry of Health is in favor of strict regulation in the field of gender reassignment, a representative of the press service of the Ministry of Health told Vedomosti. At the same time, there are a number of objective medical situations that must be taken into account: for example, those associated with congenital genetic abnormalities. According to him, in each such case, the issue should be resolved on the basis of a limited circle of medical organizations of a high expert level.

The topic of canceling the possibility of changing sex in the passport was first raised by Minister of Justice Konstantin Chuichenko on April 24 in an interview with TASS. In his opinion, this would be one of the first steps to consolidate family values ​​in Russian legislation. The permissibility of gender reassignment in Russia was enshrined in law in 1997.

According to the head of the Investigative Committee of Russia, Alexander Bastrykin, there are cases when men changed their sex in order to avoid mobilization. “Gender change on paper is a deception, a fraud. If this is fraud, this deceit violates the interests of the state, our defense capability,” TASS reported Bastrykin’s words on May 11.

On April 28, Volodin announced that 2,700 decisions related to gender reassignment had been registered in the country (from 2018 to 2022, according to registry offices). Every year, the number of people changing gender at passport offices is growing exponentially, Davankov notes. Moreover, according to Volodin, the cost of a medical report for a sex change in commercial clinics is estimated at 30,000 rubles or more. up to 60,000 rubles

Over the past five years, about 190 marriages have been registered after the gender change, Chuichenko said. This, in his opinion, creates legal collisions and “inconsistency with current conceptual documents and constitutional priorities,” since “a person who has changed sex in the passport, but remains physiologically the same, can marry, adopt children.”

Anastasia Mayer contributed to the preparation of the article