President Javier Milei's government announced Wednesday that it will amend Argentina’s Gender Identity Law to “prohibit hormone treatments and gender reassignment surgery for minors under 18 years of age.”
Presidential Spokesperson Manuel Adorni confirmed the news in a statement issued by the Casa Rosada.
“These interventions to which children are exposed are a serious risk to their physical and mental health, as they imply an interruption in their maturation process,” the official said.
The Gender Identity Law, passed in 2012, allows minors under the age of 18 to undergo such treatments as long as they have the authorisation of their legal guardians or the approval of the judicial authorities.
Adoni said that “in many cases the effects of these treatments and surgeries are irreversible,” adding that “pioneering countries” on gender issues “such as the United Kingdom, Sweden, Finland and the United States” are backtracking and “prohibiting minors from undergoing these processes.”
Milei’s chief spokesperson also said the government had “decided to ban prison transfers based on gender changes.”
“This means that if a convicted person is in a men's prison, they can no longer ask to be transferred to a women's ward just because they perceive themselves as such,” said Adorni, who said that the measure “guarantees the safety of all female prisoners.”
Adorni's words soon provoked a reaction from human rights groups and NGOs, some of whom indicated they would “resort to the courts” to challenge the move.
“The President cannot modify a law by decree. And if he tries to do so, we will resort to the justice system and the Inter-American Court [of Human Rights] if necessary,” the Federación Argentina LGBT said in a post on social media.
The announcements come just four days after a large pro-LGBT+ march in Buenos Aires and a dozen other cities nationwide to protest the rolling back of rights and recent comments made by Milei at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
In a January 23 speech, Milei doubled down on his so-called “cultural battle,” railing against “wokeism” and “radical feminism.”
Tacitly linking so-called “gender ideology” with paedophilia, Milei has also announced that he intends to remove femicide as an aggravating factor in the sentencing and charging of crimes.
– TIMES/AFP
Comments