Nearly 400 members of the State Duma, the lower house of Russia's parliament, backed the proposed amendments to existing legislation. The bill aims to ban "medical interventions to change a person's gender" Russian state officials have indicated that such operations could affect the country's defense capability amid the Ukraine war.
A law prohibiting gender change – or gender reassignment – would mean that both acts could be punished as punishable by law. The already prevalent repression of the LGBTQIA community and their rights could thus accelerate even further.