Sweden’s parliament on Wednesday passed a law lowering the age required for legal sex change from 18 to 16, AP News reports.
The vote was 234 in favour, 94 against and 21 were absent.
Young people under 18 still need permission from a guardian, a doctor and the National Health and Welfare Board.
But a diagnosis of “gender dysphoria”, defined by medical professionals as the psychological distress experienced by those whose gender expression does not match their gender identity, will no longer be required.
The centre-right coalition of Sweden’s conservative Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson was not united on the issue: his own moderates and liberals largely supported the law, while the small Christian Democrats opposed it. The populist party with far-right roots, the Sweden Democrats, which supports the government in parliament but is not part of it, also opposed it.
Similar laws are already in place in Denmark, Norway, Finland and Spain, among others. In the UK, the Scottish Parliament passed a bill in 2022 to allow people aged 16 and over to change the gender designation on their identity documents by self-declaration. The UK government vetoed it, and in December Scotland’s highest civil court upheld the decision.
Citing the need for caution, the Swedish authorities decided to stop hormone therapy for minors in 2022, except in very rare cases, and decided that mastectomies for adolescent girls wishing to transition should only be performed in research facilities.
There has been a dramatic increase in cases of gender dysphoria in Sweden. The trend is particularly marked among children between the ages of 13 and 17 who were born female, with an increase of 1,500 per cent since 2008, according to the Board of Health and Welfare.
