What is the new bill on changing legal gender? 

The proposed new law will lower the age at which someone can apply to change their official gender in Sweden’s population register from 18 to 16, with only a “simplified test of gender identity”. This will not require either a formal diagnosis of gender dysphoria or evidence that a person’s identification with the gender they want to change to dates back to early childhood.  

The new law will also mean that people no longer need permission from the Swedish Board of Health and Welfare before having genital surgery to make their body better match their gender identity.

However, such interventions will, as today, require a medical examination and can only be performed on people who have turned 18, with an age limit of 23 for those who want their testicles or ovaries removed. 

The bill was first proposed back in 2014, when the then Social Democrat-led government proposed allowing people to change their legal gender from the age of 12, with the bill sent out for consultation in the summer of 2022, just before the general election.

The new right-wing government then waited more than a year before deciding to push it forward.    

When is it going before parliament? 

The bill is due to go before parliament for a vote on April 17th. 

How is the government split on the issue? 

Badly, both between parties and within each party.

The Moderate Party and the Liberal Party are both in favour of the bill at the party level. The third government party, the Christian Democrats, is against it, though as is the government’s powerful support party, the Sweden Democrats. 

This is why it was the parliament’s Committee on Health and Welfare which submitted the bill to the Riksdag parliament rather than the government. By using this slightly unusual procedure, the Moderate and Liberal parties hoped to get the bill passed with the support of the opposition Social Democrat, Green, Centre, and Left parties, who are all in favour at a party level. 

The representatives for the Christian Democrats and Sweden Democrats on the committee voted against sending the bill to parliament, and on Friday they made a last-ditch attempt to block the vote. 

The two parties are hoping to win a parliamentary vote to return the law to the health and welfare committee, using a parliamentary procedure that requires a third of MPs present to vote in favour of it, or 117 MPs if all are present.

The two parties have 91 MPs, to stop the bill coming before parliament they will need to win the backing of 16 or more MPs.    

How are the parties split internally?

The Moderate Party is the most deeply divided, with two crisis meetings held on Friday April 5th, one for the parliamentary group of MPs and and another for the chairs of the party’s special interest organisations, including its women’s group and its LGBTQ group. 

According to Sweden’s TT newswire only 10 out of the party’s 68 MPs are actually in favour of the new law, with an article in the Expressen newspaper estimating that 80 percent were against it.

At least one, the Gothenburg MP Ellen Juntti, has said she will rebel against the party line and vote against the bill.   

“It’s chaos to put it mildly,” said one MP to TT. 

The Moderate MPs are particularly uncomfortable with the proposal to allow 16 year-olds to change their legal gender. 

On Thursday the party’s leader Ulf Kristersson said that he, himself, would be more comfortable keeping the age limit at 18, a statement that has if anything made opponents even more angry, seeing as he is seen as the main force in the party pushing for the bill to pass. 

“He’s been completely invisible desite being the one who forced all this to happen,” complained an anonymous Moderate Party MP. “He should come forward and stand up for it, not us, who are against it.”

Christian Sonesson, the hard-right Moderate mayor of Staffanstorp in southern Sweden called for the party’s leader, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, to shelve the law in the Expressen newspaper on Wednesday. 

“End your silence and stop the gender identity law,” he advised Kristersson. 

What about the opposition parties? 

The opposition Social Democrats are also split, with the chair of the party’s women’s organisation, Annika Strandhäll, opposed.

Strandhäll was the former health minister who developed the bill only to shelve it in 2018 after a series of investigative programmes on SVT criticised the treatment young people with gender dysphoria were receiving. She has highlighted the lack of any clear explanation for the sharp rise in the number of young people diagnosed with gender dysphoria over the past decade.  

Two other former Social Democrat ministers, former foreign minister Margot Wallström and former gender equality minister Margareta Winberg have also come out against the bill, signing a recent debate article in the Expressen newspaper calling for it to be stopped.

The article warned that allowing young people to change their legal gender could put them on “a fast track to going further with physical treatment”. 

Why are the Moderate and Liberal Parties pushing ahead with this? 

The Moderate Party’s leader, Ulf Kristersson, is highly engaged in LGBTQ issues and last autumn told the party’s MPs that he wanted them all to back him on the new law. He is also thought to have promised the Liberal Party, which is keen to make it easier for people who want to change gender, to push ahead with the bill.