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MADRID, Spain, July 6, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – The Spanish cabinet passed a proposed bill last week that would allow gender-confused people, including minors as young as 12, to change their gender on official documents upon request.   

The draft law removes requirements that individuals use cross-sex hormones for at least two years and present a gender dysphoria diagnosis to change their legal documents in accordance with their so-called “gender identity,” Evangelical Focus reported. The legislation still requires another reading in the cabinet and approval by the Spanish parliament. 

Under the proposed “trans law,” anyone over 16 could change their documents by filling out a request, without witnesses, and confirming it three months later. Minors as young as 12 could also change their officially-recognized gender if given permission by their parents, or by a judge, if their parents refuse consent. 

Even children under 12 would be able to register with a different name, though their legal gender could not be amended. Requests would be completed as early as four months after initial application, according to Catalan News. 

The radical legislation additionally would ban consensual therapies to change sexual orientation, allow lesbians to access artificial reproduction methods through Spain’s national health service, and let unmarried lesbian couples register as biological mothers of children.

“The Trans Law is a serious attack against the equality of Spaniards and the guardianship of parents,” Spanish conservative party VOX said last week. 

Around 50 feminist groups have also denounced the bill, calling it “regressive.” 

“These legal reforms are regressive and it is essential to stop them in order not to lose the protection of the specific rights against gender-based oppression,” a statement by the Confluencia Feminista federation read

Spain’s leftist ruling coalition has been negotiating a transgender identification bill for months, and the Spanish Congress killed a previous draft in May due to infighting between the dominant Socialist party and the hard-left Unidas Podemos party. The new proposal “does not essentially modify the scope” of the old version, Evangelical Focus said. 

Passage of the bill would make Spain one of more than a dozen countries, including Argentina and the Netherlands, that have already imposed “gender self-determination” policies.

Extreme pro-LGBT measures have advanced across Europe in recent months, as in Germany, where the federal government introduced a bill similar to Spain’s “trans law” in March before pulling it amid protests. Italy is currently considering another LGBT bill, which the Vatican has condemned over concerns that it would criminalize Italian Catholics who reject same-sex “marriage” and adoption.

Hungary, by contrast, approved legislation last month to ban promotion of transgenderism and homosexuality to children, after having enshrined the natural family and biological sex in the national constitution last year. Several European nations, including Spain, Germany, Italy, and Ireland, have since signed a joint statement calling on the European Union to retaliate against Hungary, which European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has vowed to do.