In that country’s most recent attack on LGBTQ+ people, Russia’s lower house of parliament (the State Duma) passed a new law banning gender-reassignment surgery, the BBC reported.
The measure will also ban people changing their genders on state documents.
It now needs approval from the upper house and President Vladimir Putin, which are pretty much seen as formalities.
LGBTQ+-rights groups said the legislation would have a serious impact on the health of people denied access to care. “I think this is an absolutely fascist law, which deprives people of medical care and any basic human rights,” said Yan Dvorkin, head of the Center T rights organization that provides support for Russian transgender people. (In May, Dvorkin was fined 100,000 rubles, or about $1,260, for violating the country’s “gay propaganda” law, according to RFE/RL.)
However, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters in Moscow that some of the issues raised by activists against the bill were “perhaps excessive.”
—Andrew Davis