Sex Change Becomes Legal Right in Argentina

							                       THE LARGEST COLLECTION OF LEGAL JOBS ON EARTH




LawCrossing
Legal Daily News Feature



Sex Change Becomes Legal Right in Argentina

This is an area where our U.S. lawmakers can definitely take a cue from Argentina to increase the freedom of
humans to live as they want to. Argentina has recently passed an incredible law that allows:




05/10/12                                                         change is benign and allows a person to reflect his/her
                                                                 changing self-identity without pain across the length of
   •     Change in gender identification without accompa-        his/her life.
         nying physical changes
   •     Ability to change gender, image and birth name          Katrina Karkazis, a Stanford University medical
         without needing to undergo physical changes and         anthropologist was thrilled with the information. She
         approval from doctors or judges                         is the author of a book on bioethics called “Fixing
   •     “Obligatory Medical Plan” where healthcare              Sex” and said “There’s a whole set of medical criteria
         companies would have to provide for sex-change          that people have to meet to change their gender in
         surgery and/or hormonal therapy on demand               the U.S., and meanwhile this gives the individual an
                                                                 extraordinary amount of authority for how they want to
Lauding the Gender Identity Law, which passed 55-0 in            live. It’s really incredible.”
the Argentine Senate, Sen. Miguel Pichetto said “This is
truly a human right: the right to happiness.”                    Karkazis said that there is not going to be any
                                                                 significant burden of the Argentine national exchequer
Lawmakers in Argentina have held that people have                due to rising demands in sex change accompanying
a right to live as they choose and according to the              the law. She said, “This isn’t going to create a huge
identities they choose.                                          demand on the national health system for these
                                                                 procedures. They’re difficult, painful, irreversible. And
However, in places like U.S. gender change is                    this is why many people don’t do it.”
mandatorily accompanied by physical changes which
are often painful and irreversible. The law in Argentina         Senator Osvaldo Lopes, the only openly gay national
now makes it possible for people to change their official        lawmaker in Argentina said, “This law is going to enable
identities without being forced to undergo genital               many of us to have light, to come out of the darkness,
surgery or hormone therapy. This allows a person to              to appear … There many people in our country who also
reverse his/her identity at will if his/her self-image           deserve the power to exist.”
changes. Allowing a change in official and public
identity without accompanying mandatory genital                  How about having such a law in U.S?




PAGE                                                 www.lawcrossing.com