Transgender rights: France scraps sterilisation in status law

Transgender rights activists have welcomed a new French law that lets transgender people change their legal status without having to be sterilized.

The activist group ILGA-Europe called it “clear progress” that “another European country has dispensed with the shameful practice of sterilization”.

But it regretted that trans people in France will still have to get a court to recognize their gender change.

Laws in Denmark, Malta, Ireland and Norway have gone further, it said.

In those countries, legal gender recognition relies on the principle of “self-determination” – dispensing with medical or judicial requirements.

That principle was also advocated by the Council of Europe – the top European human rights watchdog – in an anti-discrimination resolution last year

Read more here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-37653459