Polish parliament working on draft ban on “gender reassignment” procedures for children

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• On Tuesday, 23 July, the Sejm's Committee on Petitions reviewed a bill drafted by the Ordo Iuris Institute for prohibiting the performance of gender transitions, i.e. so-called "gender reassignment" operations, on minors, incapacitated persons, or persons suffering from mental disorders that make informed consent impossible.

• During the committee’s session, the Institute was represented by Ordo Iuris Board member Rafał Dorosiński, Esq., who is also a co-author of the project, which was submitted to the Sejm a year ago, in July 2023.

• After the debate, the project was unanimously submitted for further proceedings in the relevant committees – the Health Committee and the Justice and Human Rights Committee.

On Tuesday, 23 July 2024, the Polish Sejm’s Parliamentary Committee on Petitions gave favourable consideration to the bill for amending the Law on the Profession of Physician and Dentist, which was registered on 8 August 2023 (petition no.: BKSP-155-X-1/23). The bill was submitted to the Sejm on 12 July 2023 by the Ordo Iuris Institute for Legal Culture Foundation, under the slogan “Stop the mutilation of children”. At the time, the Ordo Iuris Institute informed the public about it in a press conference. This project was accompanied by a public awareness campaign, which is being featured at https://stopokaleczaniudzieci.pl/.

The accompanying discussion of the bill in the Sejm’s Committee on Petitions on 23 July took place as Ordo Iuris Board member Rafał Dorosiński, Esq., acting as a representative of the bill’s authors -- MPs Urszula Augustyn (vice-chair of the committee, KO), Rafał Bochenek (committee chair, PiS), Marcin Józefaciuk (KO), and Krzysztof Mieszkowski (KO), as well as the former MP who is currently a regional assembly councillor for Lower Silesia, legal advisor Sławomir Jan Piechota (committee chair from 2015 to 2023, KO) – took the floor. Following this debate, which lasted for more than half an hour and was unusually long for this committee, the project was unanimously referred for further work in the relevant committees: the Committee on Health as well as the Committee on Justice and Human Rights, where it will be proceeded with the status of a committee project, i.e. with the status of a non-party project.

This draft bill envisages the introduction of a ban on performing “transitions” – i.e. so-called “gender reassignment” surgery and other medical procedures – on minors, incapacitated persons, or those suffering from mental disorders which make it impossible for them to give informed consent, by adding a new article, 34a, to Poland’s Law on Physician and Dentist Professions as well as paragraph 2a to Article 58. According to the proposed Article 34a, it would henceforth be unacceptable for a patient who is a minor, partially or totally incapacitated, or who has been diagnosed with “neurodevelopmental disorders, mental illnesses or disorders, including personality disorders, or is otherwise incapable of giving informed consent, despite having full legal capacity” to “have surgery or take other medical measures in order to obtain sexual characteristics typical of the sex opposite to the male or female sex of the patient as recognised at birth”. This includes in particular “removal of sex glands, use of sex hormones and their analogues, interference with the functioning of the sex glands and the action of the sex hormones they produce, [or] removal or production of secondary and tertiary sexual characteristics”. The proposed Article 58(2), on the other hand, provides for the introduction of a prison sentence of up to three years for persons who perform such surgery or undertake other medical acts as defined in Article 34a.

This relatively short draft is accompanied by an extensive 37-page explanatory memorandum. It points out that “in recent years, in many countries around the world, especially in Europe and North America, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of minors declaring their identification with the sex opposite to their birth sex. Particularly alarming are the statistics on requests made at specialised medical centres for hormonal and surgical interventions on children”, so that “in Sweden, Finland, the United Kingdom, and 19 [now 25; O.I. note] states of the USA, medical interventions on minors aimed at making the patient resemble the opposite sex have been discontinued or drastically limited. In other countries, far-reaching caution has been recommended in their use, emphasising the above model’s experimental nature. In light of the above, the existing lack of regulations in Poland protecting minors from actions interfering with their sexual development, which have the features of experimentation and carry irreversible consequences for the patient’s health and life, mandates the legislator’s intervention”.

Prof. Joanna Smyczyńska, a paediatric endocrinologist, also spoke at the press conference at which the project was presented a year ago and stressed the inappropriateness of the term “gender reassignment”: “From a medical point of view, something such as ’gender reassignment’ is simply not possible. We are not able to change the genetic information that we have stored in every cell in a living being. We are not able to change the sex glands that we have”. Advocate Rafal Dorosiński, a member of the Ordo Iuris Board, then drew attention to the scale of the problem: “In the United States and Europe, over the last ten years or so, the number of referrals of young people, children, and teenagers to so-called gender clinics, which are engaged in gender transitioning, has increased by a scale of hundreds or even thousands of percent. In Sweden, the UK,  Italy, and France, the number of such cases has shot up.” The President of Ordo Iuris, Jerzy Kwaśniewski, Esq., emphasised that there is a growing social awareness of what this so-called “transition” is: “There is a greater and greater understanding that a young person subjected to pressures from the surrounding culture and of fashion, and who, after all, is denied even the freedom to smoke cigarettes or buy alcohol, cannot give informed consent for undergoing the irreversible physical changes involved in the deprivation of his or her ability to conceive”. In turn, between 14-17 July 2023, the Social Changes research lab conducted a public opinion poll, the results of which show that as many as 69% of Poles support the ban on transitions, while only 12% are against it.

On 20 March 2024, an opinion on the bill (letter No. BEOS-WP-244/24) was issued by the Office for Expertise and Regulatory Impact Assessment of the Chancellery of the Sejm. While refusing to give its full approval to the project, it also expressed its acceptance of the intention to regulate the issue of the prohibition of transitioning for minors.

On 23 July 2024, during the discussion of the draft in the Committee on Petitions, the members of PM Donald Tusk’s Civic Coalition (pl. Koalicja Obywatelska, KO), Marcin Józefaciuk, and Krzysztof Mieszkowski, who are known for their public support of the LGBT+ movement’s demands, expressed their scepticism towards the ban on child transitions. Former committee chairman Sławomir Jan Piechota voiced the opinion that the draft was too wide-ranging for the Committee on Petitions, which usually deals with more specific draft regulations. Urszula Augustyn, vice-chairwoman of the committee, stressed however that “[the draft] is well developed, the arguments are very elaborate, very well-prepared. Hats off in this respect. There really are very, very many of these arguments.” She added, however, that as there are both pros and cons in this debate, the bill should be referred to the more relevant parliamentary committees – the Committee on Health and the Committee on Justice and Human Rights.

This proposal was favourably received by the committee chairman, Rafał Bochenek, and was unanimously approved, so it will be subject to further parliamentary work in the relevant committees.