MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia’s lower house of parliament, the State Duma, is expected to give its initial backing in a vote later on Wednesday to legislation that would ban sex reassignment surgery.
Under President Vladimir Putin, Russian lawmakers have increasingly denounced and cracked down on what they call “non-traditional” lifestyles they say are being promoted by the West.
The proposed legislation would ban state agencies from changing a person’s gender in their personal documents.
In addition to outlawing gender reassignment surgery it would also ban “any medical interventions aimed at shaping a person’s primary and secondary sex characteristics,” according to a document posted in the Duma’s database.
The only exception would be surgery “aimed at treating congenital anomalies in children”, the draft legislation said.
Parliament last year passed a new law which critics say effectively bans representation of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in public and in the media.
(Reporting by Reuters reporters; Writing by Filipp Lebedev; Editing by Andrew Osborn)
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