Spain Allows Teenagers to Freely Change Their Gender at Age 16
In a 191 to 60 vote and 90 abstentions, the Spanish Ministers of Parliament passed the so-called ‘transgender law’ today, allowing people to freely change their registered gender from the age of 16, according to The Guardian. This comes after months of debate within the ruling left-wing party.
Passing the historic law also extends the new right to 14 to 16-year-olds as long as they have the consent of their legal guardians, and for 12 to 14-year-olds, if they get the green light from a judge.
Spain’s Equality Minister, Irene Montero, began her speech to Congress by thanking the LGBTQ+ community and trans collectives for getting the law passed. She continued saying, “This is a law that recognizes trans people’s right to freely decide their gender identity. It stops trans realities being treated as abnormalities. Trans people aren’t sick people; they’re people – full stop From today, the state recognizes that.”
The new measure also means that it will no longer be necessary to provide medical reports attesting to gender dysphoria or proof of two years of hormonal treatment, as was previously the case for adults.
The newly passed law not only introduces self-ID from the age of 14, but it also bans conversion therapy (punishable by hefty fines), bans intersex surgeries on babies, and grants lesbian mothers equal parenting rights, according to a tweet from Openly, the LGBTQ+ news arm of Thomson Reuters Foundation Initiative.
Spain joins a few countries in the world that allow gender self-determination via a simple declaration, following Denmark, the first country to grant this right in Europe to transgender people in 2014.
