The president said that the request to include the report for under 18s “falls far short of the position of the National Ethics and Life Sciences Council, which is much more demanding in a field that the innovation is far from consensual in society and among lawmakers”.
The law in question establishes the right to self-determination of identity and expression of gender and it was approved in mid-April by the Socialists, Left Bloc, Ecologists and the Animal and nature party, the Communists abstained and the centre-right PSD and CDS voted against.
This law the president vetoed would cut the age to request a “procedure of the change of the mention of the gender at a civil registry and consequent alteration of the person’s name” through their legal representatives from 18 to 16, without the need for a medical report.
Currently, only persons of legal age can request this procedure and they must present a report that proves the diagnosis of gender identity perturbation, also called trans-sexuality, drawn up by a multidisciplinary team of clinical sexology.