Spain Allows Legal Gender Change Without a Medical Evaluation
nytimes.comThe Spanish government on Thursday approved a law allowing people 16 and older to change their legally registered gender without undergoing psychological and medical evaluations to show gender dysphoria, becoming one of the few countries to allow such gender change by self-declaration.
Spain’s minister of equality, Irene Montero, said on the Parliament floor on Thursday that the new law recognized transgender people’s right to free determination and prevented being transgender from being treated as a pathology. “Trans people are not ill people,” she said. “They are people, full stop.” Spain is among the first countries to pass such a law, following countries like Denmark and Argentina.
Similar proposals have divided public opinion elsewhere. Last month, Britain’s government overruled Scotland’s Parliament for the first time, blocking legislation that would have allowed transgender people to have the gender with which they identify legally recognized by making a declaration.
The plan would have removed a requirement for “evidence of a diagnosis of gender dysphoria.” Spanish lawmakers on Thursday also gave final approval to a law that gives women paid time off if they are diagnosed with severe menstrual pain, becoming the first country in Europe to do so.
