The Spanish authorities on Thursday accepted a regulation permitting folks 16 and older to alter their legally registered gender with out present process psychological and medical evaluations to indicate gender dysphoria, turning into one of many few nations to permit such gender change by self-declaration.

Spain’s minister of equality, Irene Montero, stated on the Parliament flooring on Thursday that the brand new regulation acknowledged transgender folks’s proper to free willpower and prevented being transgender from being handled as a pathology.

“Trans individuals are not sick folks,” she stated. “They’re folks, full cease.”

Spain is among the many first nations to cross such a regulation, following nations like Denmark and Argentina. Related proposals have divided public opinion elsewhere. Final month, Britain’s authorities overruled Scotland’s Parliament for the primary time, blocking laws that may have allowed transgender folks to have the gender with which they determine legally acknowledged by making a declaration. The plan would have eliminated a requirement for “proof of a analysis of gender dysphoria.”

Spanish lawmakers on Thursday additionally gave closing approval to a regulation that provides girls paid day without work if they’re identified with extreme menstrual ache, turning into the primary nation in Europe to take action. In addition they prolonged entry to abortion to minors 16 and older with out the consent of a father or mother or guardian.

The gender regulation has created friction between the proper and the left but additionally inside the Socialist Social gathering, Spain’s largest liberal social gathering.

Víctor Gutiérrez, the L.G.B.T. secretary of the Socialist Social gathering, praised it, writing on Twitter that it was a “regulation that improves the lifetime of hundreds of thousands of individuals.”

However Carmen Calvo, a outstanding Socialist politician and the previous deputy prime minister, abstained from voting on the regulation, and a Socialist senator stated on Twitter that lawmakers ought to reject it within the identify of feminism and socialism.

“Legal guidelines which can be being referred to as off in different nations should not be imposed by the need of a minority,” Feministas Socialistas, an affiliation of socialist feminists, stated in a press release.

However for transgender rights activists, it was a belated victory.

“The Calvary is over,” Mar Cambrollé Jurado, a transgender rights activist, wrote on Twitter. “As we speak is a historic day for trans folks.”

Below the brand new regulation, kids between 14 and 16 will have the ability to legally change their gender within the civil registry if they’re accompanied by their dad and mom or a authorized guardian, and people between 12 and 14 will want a decide’s authorization.

After the preliminary request for a authorized gender change, the applicant might want to ratify their resolution inside three months.

The regulation additionally banned conversion therapies supposed to alter an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identification.