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Ruling Against Sweden's Forced Sterilization For Transgender People Takes Effect

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Sweden has moved closer to the full repeal of a law that forced transgender citizens to udnergo sterilization through surgery in order to change the gender marker on their legal identification. A December ruling by the Stockholm adminstrative court, which found the 1972 law to be discriminatory and in violation of the European Convention of Human Rights, sets legal precedent as of January, with a full repeal of the law expected for July 2013.

Opposition to the discrimiantory law has been growing for some time. The international LGBT organization All Out hand-delivered a petition with nearly 80,000 signatures to the Swedish prime minister in January 2012, urging that the sterilization requirment be repealed. Sixteen other countires in the European Union - and many U.S. states - currently mandate surgical procedures that result in sterilzation in order for transgender people to change their legal identifictaion. These laws stand despite the fact that many transgender people cannot access surgery or do not want it.  

The Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights is now calling for the government to compensate those transgender people forced to udnergo sterilizing surgery, as it did after ending the country's more than sixty-year-long practice of eugenic sterilization.


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