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J.K. Rowling Photo by Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images

(LifeSiteNews) – Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling slammed a proposal to reform the process for legally changing one’s birth certificate in Scotland to display the opposite sex, saying the easing of regulations will “harm the most vulnerable women in society.”

The Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill seeks to amend the nation’s 2004 Gender Recognition Act to “introduce new criteria for applicants who wish to obtain a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC),” the Scottish government’s website reads.

As things stand, acquiring a GRC requires a medical assessment and diagnosis of gender dysphoria from a doctor, the candidate must live as though the opposite sex for a minimum of two years, and be at least 18 years of age.

The new proposal would completely remove the need for a medical diagnosis or any “evidence” of belonging to the opposite sex, applicants would be required to “have lived in the acquired gender for a minimum of three months” instead of two years, and the minimum age would be reduced to 16.

The GRC then grants the holder legal recognition as the opposite sex and allows them to “obtain a new birth certificate showing that gender.”

Taking umbrage with self-identification for so-called “gender transitioning,” the British author said in a tweet Saturday that relaxing the legislation around gender recognition would only exacerbate already extant problems with the law, including abuses against women in prisons.

Rowling also took aim at Social Justice Secretary Shona Robison, who said that opposition to the bill based on fears that “predatory and abusive men” might use self-identification to masquerade as women for nefarious ends has no evidence, describing Robison’s claim as simply “astounding.”

While men are transferred to women’s prisons in Scotland often simply by claiming to be women, reports from California show female inmates to have suffered numerous sexual and physical attacks at the hands of supposedly “transgender” prisoners.

Scotland’s First Minister and nationalist leader Nicola Sturgeon commented on Rowling’s statement, saying that the bill does not afford “trans people any more rights, nor does it take away from women any of the current existing rights under the Equality Act.”

The author drew further criticism from liberal activists, including India Willoughby, a supposedly “transgender” man, who accused Rowling of “bigotry” and “suggesting trans people are predators / a danger to society.”

Echoing Rowling’s concerns, however, Scottish women’s rights campaign group For Women Scotland (FWS) released a statement Thursday, condemning the bill as “a wrecking ball to safeguards by giving any man a passport to self-declare they are a woman without checks or any need for medication, surgery or diagnosis.”

The group also criticized the government’s “belated meetings” with campaign groups and “parents, detranistioners, medics, and others” as mere “window dressing only.”

“Everyone knows that a man cannot become a woman by force of will or magical thinking: it’s insulting and worrying that the Scottish Government do not,” the group stated, adding that the administration appear to be “willing to sacrifice women’s safety, set our rights back by decades, and reinforce the notion that being a woman is nothing more than a feeling or a costume.”

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